We made a land improvement (15 yr. depreciation). Turbo Tax automatically uses 39 yr depreciation. How can I change the 39 year to 15 year depreciation?

[TaxGuyBill]

Did you specifically state it is a "Land Improvement" in the program?  If not, what category did you say it was?

[larsonhometax]

Thank you for your response! We did not see a place to state "Land Improvement" Where can we enter that in Turbo Tax? We described it as land improvement, under "Depreciating Your Home" in the Business section. The options we could pick from in Turbo Tax was: 1) Your home, or 2) An improvement to your home. We chose improvement to  your home. Then we were asked to describe it, enter the cost, date purchased, etc. This was something that was placed in service a number of years ago, but, we used Form 3115 to capture the past depreciation. Our understanding is that Land Improvement (new paved driveway) is depreciated over 15 years. Turbo Tax automatically chose 39 years and we did not find a place to change that to 15 years. We went to the "Forms" section, but could not make adjustments there. Appreciate any help you can give us! Thank you!

[TaxGuyBill]

Don't enter it under Home Office.  Enter it as an "asset" for depreciation directly on the business tab for Schedule C.

[larsonhometax]

Thank you very much! We got it corrected!

[TaxGuyBill · Accepted solution]

Great, I'm glad that entering it as an "asset" (directly in the business section) rather than in the Home Office section worked out for you.

[anglerblue]

Two problems with this answer:  First the cost should not be 100% but should be limited to the home office business percentage.  Second, it does not flow through Form 8829 in case there is a Schedule C income limitation for home office deductions.  This might be the only way to get it into Turbo Tax, but the program needs a revision to allow it to link to Form 8829. 

[AmeliesUncle]

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@anglerblue wrote:

First the cost should not be 100% but should be limited to the home office business percentage. 

Second, it does not flow through Form 8829 in case there is a Schedule C income limitation for home office deductions.  

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It gives you a place to enter the business percentage.

It may be debatable (and could possibly depend on exactly what the asset is), but I don't see how a Land Improvement is part of your "Home Office" (and potentially subject to the limitation you mentioned).  It may be used for business, but in most cases it is not part of the "Home Office".

[Carl]

Two problems with this answer:

Actually, this thread is from more than 2 years ago. Things change over time.

The reason I know it's from more than 2 years, is because the date/time on all the posts in this thread prior to your post are exactly the same, down to the minute. June 1, 2019 is the day all messages from the old forum were migrated into this forum. So it's perfectly possible this thread was generated years before June 1, 2019.