Short term rentals: personal use, rented and vacant. Do vacant days count as "personal days" if the unit was unoccupied?

[MinhT · Accepted solution]

No, vacant days while the property is still available for rental are not counted as personal days.

Personal days are days when you use the property for your own needs (by yourself, friends or family members).

[JemmyFL]

TurboTax specifically says to only enter the days rented: "Don't include days when the property was vacant." 

For TY 2019 house was rented 73 days, available but vacant 138 days. Given our current travel/vacation climate, I may have even less rental days. How is this captured by TurboTax? 

[Carl]

Vacant days between renters counts as days rented, provided the owner did not utilize the property for their personal pleasure during said vacancy.

[JemmyFL]

Yes! But, as I noted in my query, TurboTax specifically says to only enter days rented. Why not enter days available also? How is this captured?

[JemmyFL]

Available for rent but vacant days cannot be counted as rental days, for TY 2019 per 2019 pub 572 pg 17:

"...When dividing your expenses, follow these rules.
• Any day that the unit is rented at a fair
rental price is a day of rental use even if
you used the unit for personal purposes
that day. (This rule doesn’t apply when determining whether you used the unit as a
home.)
• Any day that the unit is available for rent
but not actually rented isn’t a day of rental
use...."

[AmeliesUncle]

For a house that is used for both personal use and rental use, you only enter the number of day it was rented.

There is no need to enter the days it was available for rent.

[cgall99]

Did you ever get an answer to this question?  If you actually had someone sleeping in your short term rental for 65 days and it sat empty, not generating revenue the other 300 days - where does TurboTax capture this?

[DaveF1006]

No, vacant days while the property is still available for rental are not counted as personal days. Personal days are days when you use the property for your own needs (by yourself, friends or family members)

[cgall99]

Here's the issue that the original poster also stated - TurboTax asks you to enter day rented and it specifically says "do not enter days it was vacant" (I'm paraphrasing since I'm not currently on that screen).  So there are boxes for Days Rented and Days Personal Use with this note to NOT include vacant days.  I would define "Vacant" days as days it was available for rent but not actually rented.   So where does TurboTax capture those days???

It used to be that you could swap to a "form view" in TurboTax so you could see the actual wording of the IRS form if you needed clarification.  I can't find that option anymore.

I must say that the lack of clarity around dealing with short-term rentals (AirBnB units) on TurboTax was so frustrating this year I'm going to try out the H&R Block program next year.  

[AmyC]

Only the days that the rental space was used for rent or used by you are counted. The room sat ready and waiting the remaining days.

Fox example:

Rented room for 90 days - business

Relative visited for 14 days - personal

the rest must be vacant days so another box is not needed.

@cgall99

[cgall99]

I only offer my Airbnb cottage for about 1/3 of the year.  And during the Covid year I only actually managed to rent it for about 10 days.  So I would enter 10 days for "days rented" and 0 for "days personal use" and then what?  Turbo Tax would assume it's available for rent 365 days a year?  This is why the way Turbo Tax captures this information is flawed and there's no workarounds presented.  

My understanding is that the IRS cares how many days per year your place is "rented."  When other people, including tax professionals, talk about days "rented" they say the IRS wants to know how many days your place is available FOR rent.  But with Turbo Tax's explicit instruction to "not include days rental was vacant" they're making it very difficult to do so.

[cgall99]

If the IRS doesn't care how many days you actually had your place rented and only wants to know how many days it was operated as a business then why doesn't Turbo Tax just ask it that way?  And by the way, the other 2/3 of the year that I don't offer my place for rent aren't personal days.  I just don't care to have renters here all the time.  The unit sits empty 2/3 of the year.

[Carl]

@JemmyFL meant to type IRS Pub 527, not 572. There is no such publication 572 that I can find.

[AmeliesUncle]

If there are zero personal days, the number of rental days don't matter.   That only comes into play if there is also personal use.