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I have waited until the last minute (had to deal with my dad having a heart attack a few weeks ago, he's doing well, now, though), and should have probably hired someone this year, but I am starting to do my taxes now, and it's more complicated than it has been previously. In Washington state (Seattle, specifically), if it matters; no state income tax to worry about, at least. Last year, I bought a house with two friends. Joint Tenancy with Right of Survivorship, all three of us on the title, all three of us on the loan. In the course of buying this house, as part of the contractual agreement with the sellers, they paid us two months of pre-paid rent, plus a month of rent as a deposit. This wasn't structured as a rentback because our lender doesn't like rentbacks, it was specifically two months of pre-paid rent plus a deposit, which would be waived if they were out by a specific date. Well, they overstayed that date by one day for reasons having to do with the Department of Revenue saying they couldn't have the money (it's a very long story, I told most of it in the homebuying thread, here are some highlights: part one, part two, part three, part four, I don't think they're necessary to answer my questions, and didn't want to waste people's time with it if they don't care). Escrow sent us a check for the $25,000, after talking to an attorney, we returned ~$19,000, kept the other ~$6,000. Lawyer charged us $380, which was, like, a third of what I was expecting. So, I have what I think are a couple of pretty easy questions that I've already done some research on, and am really just looking for confirmation, and then a couple of harder question. 1) From what I can tell, mortgage interest can be claimed once, but should be claimable by any of the three of us, as long as we only claim it the one time between the three of us (e.g. this year, I'm the one claiming all of it, and that's okay because neither housemate is taking it); is this correct? 2) We spent ~$7300 buying points (we got a bunch of incentives and things that couldn't be used any other way), I can claim this as well, correct, as long as I'm the only one doing it? 3) I thiiiiiiiiink I have this figured out: report the ~$6000 as rental income, on form 1040 Schedule E, deduct the $380 for the attorney and the $20 for the wire fee to refund their money; technically, like, ~$17000 of the amount was "advance rent," but since we refunded it (and had they vacated on time, escrow would have refunded all of it), it feels like I can treat the remainder of the "pre-paid rent" as a deposit, and not report it? I'm not trying to get away with anything, we had this money for, like, a day. 4) I feel like the answer to this is "no," but we hired a different attorney to write up a real property agreement for us when we bought the house; can I deduct the cost of that attorney? I'm happy to answer more questions, I'm just a wordy motherfucker and trying not to eat up too much time of the people I'm hoping will help me. Thank you. Ham Equity fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Apr 2, 2024 |
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Apr 2, 2024 05:45
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| # ¿ May 10, 2024 04:39 |
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