When claiming mortgage expense in Schedule E, How to claim the mortgage personal portion on ScheduleA 8B (1098 not reported to me)

[nik9618]

Hi everyone,

I rented out my primary residence, and I claim the mortgage interest on Schedule E.

In Schedule E I enter full amount, and Turbotax split the rental vs personal portion for me.

I saw that Turbo tax set the personal portion on Schedule A 8a.

However, the mortgage interest is reported on my gf's 1098, so I have to put it in line 8b.

Is there an option I can change from 8a to 8b?

Thanks!

[Anonymous_]

Did you actually pay the interest? You can't deduct it if you did not pay the interest.

[VolvoGirl]

Do you have enough deductions to itemize on Schedule A?  It might not be needed.  And why is it on your girlfriend's 1098?  Who owns the house and pays the mortgage?  

[nik9618]

We have enough to itemize, we are trying to report to ScheduleA 8B, as the mortgage is on my gf name, and I should be putting my GF name there.

My GF and I own the house together, we are not married yet, so we file separately.

We are both on mortgage, and we each pay 50% of the mortgage monthly payment.

When we rent out, we intend to report the income and expense half and half too.

Thank you so much!

[Critter-3]

OK ... first things first.  Was this a rental for the entire tax year or did you convert this to a rental  from personal use sometime during 2022?  Are you each simply going to enter your 1/2 of the income/expenses on your personal tax return Sch E  or  are you filing a partnership return form 1065 ?   The answers to these questions will determine how to enter it in the TT program.  

[nik9618]

For the first part about when do we rent out:
We just bought the house last year, we rented out a room to a roommate a few month later (in 2022).

For the second part about inputting income/expense: Yes, that is the plan, we're gonna put 1/2 of the income and expense on Schedule, 1/2 for me, 1/2 for my GF.

Thank you so much for the help!

[Critter-3]

OK ... the TT program doesn't handle this situation easily and can be quite confusing when you rent out part of a personal residence.   So is this truly a rental situation or just a cost sharing situation among friends? If a cost sharing then you should not report any of this at all on any tax return.

If it is a true rental situation then you need to follow the interview screens very carefully so that the non profit rental is reported correctly ... the depreciation will be limited as will the mortgage interest & RE taxes ( this will be split between the Sch E and Sch A so make sure those are not reported twice in full).  If this is your first year of renting then you really should be using a paid tax professional or upgrading to one of the LIVE options so the return can be done correctly and you can get educated on how to handle this in the future.  

[nik9618]

Sorry for being not clear on the last reply. This is not a non-profit renting out for friend, the roommate is having his room, at the market price. (More like a housemate.)  We did this for profit.

We made sure the schedule A and E are divided correctly, not reported twice.  Yeah, we think we should meet the cpa/live option again too, but before that, we wanna do our best 🙂

Before that.. can you telling us how to put the mortgage interest that TT automatically put on ScheduleA 8a in the 8b box please? Is there a way we can do that easily?

Thanks!