Do I need to split rental income & all related expenses 50/50 when filing or can I put everything under one person because we are 50/50 owners, does it know to split it?

If both of you own the property 50/50 - it should be split 50/50. You cannot change the percentages just to lower one spouse's tax liability (IE: report all the income on the lower income earner). If you BOTH own it and change the ownership percentage this could cause a red flag with CRA.

Here's an excerpt from the CRA Rental Guide:

Who reports the rental income or loss?   

The person who  owns  the rental property has to report the rental income or loss. If you are a co-owner of the rental property, your share of the rental income or loss will depend on your share of ownership.

Report the rental income the same way for each year you own that rental property. In other words, you cannot change the percentage of the rental income or loss you report each year unless the percentage of your ownership in the property changes.  

There is a wealth of info in the CRA Rental Guide. Here is the link: https://bit.ly/2JwR5pH

should I enter 50% of my total rental income, if I am a co owner with my wife. The program does not seem to do that, and yet it does it for the expenses

Can I use Lawyer fees , conveyance & admin fees  and Transfer fees as a rental expense.

Here is the list from CRA on what you are able to deduct as rental expenses

https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/tax/businesses/topics/rental-income/completing-form-t776-statement-real-estate-rentals/rental-expenses-you-deduct.html

They did not answer your question about whether the program makes an automatic 50/50 split of expenses and income.

It is unclear whether Turbotax splits the rental income automatically in a co-ownership situation when filing taxes together with you spouse.

If rent is $10,000 per year, do I enter $5000 each or $10,000 each and it will figure out based on your listed your co-owner at 50%.

Same question for the expenses.  If we have $2000 of expenses do I enter $1000 each or $2000 and it will figure it out based on your listed co-owner at 50%?\

Thank-you for your feedback!

Same question but two years later.

It appears to me that TurboTax splits the expenses based on the ownership share that's entered but it does not split the income.  Can anyone confirm how we're supposed to handle the rental income split?

@queenelizabeth Are you using TurboTax CD/Download or TurboTax Online?

I'm using the download.  And I did figure out my answer thanks. The expense input section in TurboTax has a box that says "personal percentage" next to each item.  I thought that meant how much of the expense should be attributed to each owner based on ownership.  What it actually means is how much of this expense is personal and has nothing to do with the rental property.

Thank you for the update.

Thank you for choosing TurboTax.