Renting my home while I am away

[Gretchen56]

Good evening, 

Am trying to use  Turbotax Home and Business.  I have never had issues with Turbotax except for now. I have two things going on. I had to be away from home for a bit so rented it out for 4 months (split 2019 and 2020) until my return. I wanted someone in the house, not sitting empty and help pay for the HOA's.

At the same time, I was an active Realtor (not anymore)  for 9 months in 2019  with income and expenses. (I rented out my place through someone else and paid them commission as a homeowner, not on my realtor side of business).

Can it be that the Rental portion is being taken by Turbotax as if it were part of my Realtor business transactions? Upon starting to work on the rental, it asked me if I had over 750 hrs of work, or if I had worked 50% of the time as a Realtor...

I want to keep both activities separate with their own deductions.

Would my 4 month rental be considered "trade or business"? 

[Anonymous]

since the property was your home and was rented more than 15 days refer to IRS Publ 527 starting at page 19

basically you'll either end up with the net income being $0 or greater.  That's becuase no net loss is allowed.  excess expenses including depreciation are carryovers  (just in case you rent in the future) 

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p527.pdf

this gets reported on schedule E.  

you  say you worked as a realtor for 9 months.  to  give you proper advice what were you doing?   a realtor could be a person that earns commission for brokering real estate deals including finding lessees for property you don't own, buying and renting out real esate or both or something else, rehabbing property, etc.  some of these activities get reported on schedule C and others in separate columns on schedule E. 

[Carl]

Basically, just work it through the SCH E section of the program showing the conversion of your property from personal use to rental property. One thing I can't stress enough is to read the small print on each screen. The program will do some of the splits for you between SCH A for the period of time it was your residence, and SCH E for the period of time it was a rental. But the program will *NOT* do all the splits. So you have to read the small print on every single screen.

Basically, the program will split the mortgage interest. But it may or may not split everything else, depending on your specific and explicit situation.  The below information will help clarify "some" things for you.

Rental Property Dates & Numbers That Matter.

Date of Conversion - If this was your primary residence before, then this date is the day AFTER you moved out.
In Service Date - This is the date a renter "could" have moved in. Usually, this date is the day you put the FOR RENT sign in the front yard.
Number of days Rented - the day count for this starts from the first day a renter "could" have moved in. That should be your "in service" date if you were asked for that. Vacant periods between renters count also PROVIDED you did not live in the house for one single day during said period of vacancy.
Days of Personal Use - This number will be a big fat ZERO. Read the screen. It's asking for the number of days you lived in the property AFTER you converted it to a rental. I seriously doubt (though it is possible) that you lived in the house (or space, if renting a part of your home) as your primary residence or 2nd home, after you converted it to a rental.
Business Use Percentage. 100%. I'll put that in words so there's no doubt I didn't make a typo here. One Hundred Percent. After you converted this property or space to rental use, it was one hundred percent business use. What you used it for prior to the date of conversion doesn't count.

[Hal_Al]

Q. Can it be that the Rental portion is being taken by Turbotax as if it were part of my Realtor business transactions?

A. Yes.

Answer no when asked  if  you had over 750 hrs of work, or if you had worked 50% of the time as a Realtor, since the rental activity is unrelated to your work as a realtor.