The reason to aggregate, as I understand it, is to ensure you meet the 250 hour threshold. That may be hard to meet for each property individually, but if you aggregate, you only have to meet 250 hours TOTAL.
If you choose to take the QBI deduction for rentals without the safe harbor, it appears that you could possibly be held to higher standards to qualify at a business or trade. This could end up with the deduction being disallowed.
The really ridiculous thing about this is the rationale TT keeps using to stop us from efiling. They say you have to manually sign a declaration that you meet the terms of the safe harbor. THAT IS NOT TRUE! Read the irs reg (www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-19-38.pdf). It says NOTHING about the statement being manually signed.
I've been fighting this issue for over a month. TT is not helpful at all on this. Printing and mailing is not an acceptable option. I've been trying to determine which of the other software providers can handle this and efile. As soon as I do, I'll be an ex-TurboTax customer.
