Video: Reporting Rental Properties on IRS Tax Forms

The IRS may flag rental properties with consistent losses. Learn tips for reporting rental income and losses from your investment properties to avoid a tax audit from the IRS in this free personal finance video from an experienced accountant.

Video Transcript

If you have played the monopoly game and you have invested in a lot of real estate, and you own a lot of rental properties, when you're preparing your income tax return you need to make sure that on your schedule E you're listing the address of your rental properties and what kind of rental properties you have. If you have rental income properties that are consistently giving you losses in excess of your income and considering depreciation, then this might be an area that the IRS would want to look at in an audit. So, you want to make sure that you're including on your income tax return all of the information about the properties and that they are truly rental income properties. If you're including a second home that you have no income for, consistently, over a period of time, you might want to make an explanation on your return about why you have this expense on your return that's not accompanied by some income. So, if you're an investor in a lot of real estate, you want to make sure that that real estate on your return is documented as schedule E investment property instead of, perhaps, needing to be included on schedule A as second home property. This can help you avoid an IRS audit if you potentially include a statement in your return about your rental income and losses.

Reporting Rental Properties on IRS Tax Forms

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