Oakland, CA · Member since 2015 · 109 posts · 41 votes
Hey all,
Curious if anybody has found a "one shoe fits all" place that they can input all of their deductible items in, so they know roughly how much they might owe/be due when tax season comes around.
I found one excel sheet that seems to have everything for depreciation, but it doesn't let me add in items that are fully tax deductible (i.e. repairs). I'd also like to add in the rental income, my current wage and all other general deductions, so I can get an overall sense of where things will end up.
To make things even more complicated, I have an owner-occupied duplex.
Has anybody found a service that allows you to do all of this reasonably easily?
Hey @Justin Pumpr, you need to find a good accountant that focuses on real estate investing. I AM NOT AN ACCOUNTANT. Get the same accounting program they have, he can set you up with a chart of accounts and then hire someone to input receipts for you. Then before your visit to the accountant, you export your chart of accounts and send it to them prior to the meeting so he can look at them.
You can use Excel, but why. Applications like Quickbooks are easy to use and they spit out all the reports you need.
If you are investing as a business and not as a hobby, talk to an accountant. Especially your situation with owner occupied and investment. Half the duplex is principal residence and part of that (like one of the rooms you use as an office, utilities, percentage of maintenance, etc) and office equipment will be business related. The other half will be investment with expenses, depreciation and capital expenses that have to be depreciated.
Accountant who specializes in real estate. If you don't know one, ask CA based members of Bigger Pockets or your local REIA.
I use Quicken Rental Property Manager. It does not do depreciation schedules, but it does amortize loans. I use it to track all my rental income and expenses as well as all my personal income and expenses. At tax time, TurboTax will import tax schedule items from Quicken. I use TurboTax to maintain my schedule of depreciable assets. Quicken does have a Tax Planner function that helps predict your tax bill using your Quicken data.
Thanks for the responses. I have an accountant who is pretty well versed in all of this and I have a sense of what is deductible, what can be depreciated e.t.c, but I was hoping there was a place that I could put everything into that would calculate for me. Sounds like Quicken, or Quickbooks might have that, but neither seem tailored specifically to rental property only with all of the use cases available. Sounds like there's a business opportunity there....