Reenting rooms (live in Landlord) Can I prorate separately common area's utility from the rooms rented?

[taxache]

I already prorated the rented area.

The common areas surpass both private and rented area in square footage. I would not need to keep heat, lights going in most common areas if not rented.

Can I prorate separately the utility for common areas?

[CathiM · Accepted solution]

You can prorate the expenses and areas of the house as you see fit, just document how you are arriving at the amounts you put on your tax return.  Keep the calculations for your records. 

Keep in mind TurboTax allocates expenses according to rental days. So if you rented all year, you would enter in for utilities the amount you allocate to rental expenses.

[taxache]

Thank you
your heads up regarding turbo Tax allocating expenses was beyond useful, I had entered it prorated already, had to redo.

Will all the deductibles expenses  be  allocated? I have expenses that were entirely (100%) applied to the rental area with zero personal use.

Is there a way to bypass turbo tax's automatic allocation?

Thank you again

[CathiM]

Your welcome! To bypass the allocation, you would have to increase the amount of the one expense so that after the allocation it shows the correct amount for the rental area. That is tricky but possible. You cannot exclude a category of the expenses from the allocation.