Rental | Schedule E - Renting out room in personal residence

[MaxRLC]

Own a home which is personal residence.   

Rented out a room in the personal residence. 

According to IRS code, I have to identify how much of the interest paid and property tax is attributable to the personal residence and which is attributable to the room that is being rented.   In fact, Turbo Tax includes the question, "rented our part of my home".   Here is the problem:

Owner is in the home the entire year.   Room was rented out during the same year (for 8 months) while owner was also in the home.  However, because the room was rented out for 8 months (instead of all year), Turbo Tax is asking for the amount of days.  If the owner was in the home all  year (365 days) and the tenant was in the rented room for 240 days, an error message pops up; "CHECK YOUR ENTRIES, DAYS RENTED PLUS DAYS OF PERSONAL USE MUST BE NO MORE THAN 365".  But wait, owner is renting out a room AT THE SAME TIME the room is being rented out.   How do you answer that question??

(Appears the only way is to answer the property was rental all year long - If that option is checked, Turbo Tax does not ask for the days).    HELP.

[MaxRLC]

See prior post:

"But wait, owner is renting out a room AT THE SAME TIME the room is being rented out."

Correction:  But wait, owner is renting out a room WHILE AT THE SAME TIME is living in the same residence that he owns.   

Again, as noted, this causes a " number of days" issue.    How do you solve this issue?

HELP.

[sjonescrg]

MaxRLC,

Think about the room separately.  So for 8 months of the year the room was rented to a tenant.  During the other 4 months the room was part of the personal residence.   Split the 365 days accordingly using the exact dates.  

Hope this helps.

[Tocharka]

MaxRLC, I am running into the same issue. A room was rented to tenants  for 90 days of the year, and we lived in the house at the same time. It was more as a favor, than as a regular business. Now I can't figure out where on Schedule E to enter the income. It looks like I could not find in the software an option to rent out a room from your personal residence for a short period of time.

[Tocharka]

 @sjonescrg, how do you do the split?

I have a similar situation - we lived in the house for 365 days and rented out one room for 90 days.

It looks like the software treats the house as converting it to a rental. 

Thanks for your thoughts.