Depreciation calculation on a co-owned property by turbo tax

[AN16]

I co-own a property with my son and we put it in service as a rental this year.

I started entering all the income (rental) and the expenses using the usual TT pages as I have done with properties I own solely. I did put in that I owned 50% of the property when the question came up in the series of questions and TT then assigns half the values I enter for the income and expenses to my Schedule E. Except for when it comes to the depreciation. I am quite familiar with how depreciation is taken (in fact I double check TT using my own Excel sheet which also takes into account that the property was only in service for 290 days and not the full 365 days). So my question is not about that, but the fact the TT does NOT split the depreciation 50%. It puts in the entire amount on my Schedule E. I am not sure why it does that and the only way to fix it seems to be to enter 50% of the basis value to have TT do this correctly. This is strange since it does apply the 50% to the rest, which if one is not careful and only puts in 50% of the income and expenses then it applies the 50% again. 

I hope someone with experience in this area or one of the experts can tell me if I indeed have to split the basis for TT to do this right or if there is some other way around it.

thanks

[MarilynG1 · Accepted solution]

Yes, you will need to enter 50% of the Cost Basis in the Property Profile section of Rentals.

You want depreciation calculated for you on your Cost Basis, which is 50% of the total cost.

Even though you indicated you're a 50% owner, TurboTax assumes that the Cost Basis you entered is your 50%.

Here's more discussion on Jointly Owned Rental Property Reporting.

[AN16]

Thanks for the verification.

A suggestion for TT is to clearly lay this out on the pages when such info is being asked for. I only figured this out by looking through the forms themselves which I find myself doing often since I feel like I have to double check TT in various cases such as this.