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How to properly Enter sale of a rental property

Owned Rental Property several years, exclusively used for rental (no personal) , sold it in June 2020.  Question is how to properly enter this into TurboTax Home & Business?  

In TT Rental & Properties there is a place to log the "sale of property", but is that the only place I need to enter information about the sale?   

More questions within that module of TT:  How do I answer the "annual elections"?   For all improvements I made over the years affecting the cost basis , do I need to add an "asset" line in TT?    TT makes it sound like the asset has to be in place a full year, but some of the improvement obviously is only a month old.   Also when adding an Asset, TT makes you choose Rental Real Estate/Computer Video/Tools machinery/intangibles... what do I select for a renovation?  What is meant by the phrase "residential real estate " in this context?  is cost of land 0?   if I choose "rental real estate" category, then it auto-depreciates over 27 years which makes no sense since I sold it a month later and appears I don't realize the value to my bottom line.

 

Timeline: 

- Rented or searched for renter 100% of time of ownership except last month

-March: Last tenant left End of March so we have 3 months rent in 2020

-April: Tried to Rent in April and then decided to sell.

-May: renovations (removed walls/Fixtures/replaced electrical fixtures/painted), lots of yard work, powerwashing deck, and staging for sale.

-June: Sold property

 

Apology for the questions as it seems to me like hte use case above is reasonably straight forward but I find the TT interface for this activity seems to have very important meaning behind each menu choice chosen but its not clear without a CPA what the intent is so we need to reverse engineer what the TT software is trying to do and then choose the right things so the result is an accurate reflection of the activities.

 

Thus I warmly welcome any advice possible on where & which menus in TT to navigate for this transaction to be legally compliant but also to minimize tax costs.

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3 Replies

How to properly Enter sale of a rental property

Simple fix ... do NOT try to enter these expenses ( -May: renovations (removed walls/Fixtures/replaced electrical fixtures/painted), lots of yard work, powerwashing deck, and staging for sale. )     as assets ... they are entered as repairs or maintenance on the Sch E in the year of sale.  

 

 

How to properly Enter sale of a rental property

Thank you.  You are correct that is the simplest way.  Sadly I am triggering both NIIT and AMT somehow.

 

Is it correct to say that if I tried applying the renovation parts of the cost to increase my cost basis, that the impact is reduced because the cost basis gets split between land and property?

LynnN82
Expert Alumni

How to properly Enter sale of a rental property

No, the cost basis of the land is not a percentage of the total basis. Rather, that basis should be established when the property is acquired (or "as of" that date) and it does not change when items are added to the basis of the home.

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