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Level 2
July 28, 2021
Question

Section 179 depreciation

  • July 28, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 15 views

Publication 946, page 16 says "Rental property does not qualify (if renting property is not your trade or business). I took that to mean it does qualify if renting houses is your trade or business. My client is a real estate professional with around 60 single family rentals. Intuit lets me take the 179 depreciation, but I get an error if any is carried forward from the previous year. Is that not allowed?

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3 replies

dkh
Level 15
July 28, 2021

Try Pub527 - see if that helps answer your questions

Level 15
July 29, 2021

What is the error?

Yes, only a "Trade or Business" qualifies for Section 179.  The activity of your client definitely rises to that level, so it is allowed, including carryover amounts.

However, on the 4562 ProSeries automatically assumes that rentals DON'T rise to that level.  So you need to manually override the income limitation on the top of Form 4562 to reflect the income/loss of the rentals.  Perhaps that is the issue that is causing your problem???

If you did not change/override the income limitation on last year's 4562, then it is possible that last year's section 179 is wrong (and therefore the carryover amount would be wrong), so you need to check that.

 

Level 2
July 30, 2021

Taxguybill,

   Does that mean I cannot file the return electronically (because Intuit gives an error whenever anything is overridden).

   I appreciate your initial answer very much.

   Dave Morris

Level 15
July 30, 2021

Some overrides don't cause any problems, but when e-filing, you can disable error-checking and it will go through fine. 

 

Level 2
August 2, 2021

Billtaxguy,

   I didn't know the error checking could be disabled. How do you do that?

   Dave Morris