What is a Schedule E and who should use it?
A Schedule E form is used to report any income or loss that you have incurred from rental real estate to the IRS. It’s typically used by:
- Individuals who own rental property in their own name, with their spouse, or through a single member LLC.
- Individuals who do not meet the IRS definition of Real Estate Professional.
- Individuals who do not provide additional, out of the ordinary services to their renters (e.g., if you operate a bed and breakfast, you likely need to use Schedule C instead of Schedule E).
How do I generate a Schedule E in Azibo?
Azibo enables rental property owners to easily generate a nearly complete, up-to-date Schedule E form for all your properties in the selected calendar year. Simply follow these steps:
- Import all rental business transactions automatically by linking the relevant bank or credit card accounts. Transactions can also be manually recorded in the same tool.
- Use our bookkeeping tool to assign each transaction to a property and category from our Chart of Accounts. Watch demo below for more info.
- Work with your CPA to calculate the values for depreciation of capitalized costs and amortization of loan costs for each property, then add them to Azibo by creating transactions and tagging them as “Depreciation” and “Amortization.”
- Go to Reports and click Schedule E. Select the properties and the time period for the report to see the live results.
What is included on the Schedule E report?
Here is a table of all of the fields included on the Azibo Schedule E report.
For rows 3 - 19, refer to the Azibo Chart of Accounts to see which Azibo categories and subcategories roll up into each row.
| Row | Field | Definition |
| 1a | Address | The property address |
| 1b | Property Type | The classification of the rental property, such as single-family home, multi-family dwelling, condominium, or commercial property. Azibo will automatically fill this in based on what you selected when you added the property to Azibo. |
| 2 | Fair Rental Days | Fair Rental Days refer to the number of days that the property was actually rented out. This is currently not calculated by Azibo, you will have to download this and fill it in yourself before sending it to your tax preparer. Azibo will calculate this in a future enhancement. |
| 2 | Personal Use Days | Personal Use Days are the number of days you or your family used the rental property for non–rental purposes. Azibo will not populate this number, you will have to download the excel report and input it yourself, or provide it to your tax preparer directly. |
| 3 | Rents Received | Total amount of rental income received. |
| 4 | Royalties Received | Total amount of royalties received. Azibo does not track royalties received. |
| 5 | Advertising | Total amount of advertising expense. |
| 6 | Auto and travel | Total amount of Auto and Travel expense. |
| 7 | Cleaning and maintenance | Total amount of Cleaning and maintenance expense. |
| 8 | Commissions | Total amount of Commissions expense. |
| 9 | Insurance | Total amount of Insurance expense. |
| 10 | Legal and other professional fees | Total amount of Legal and other professional fees expense. |
| 11 | Management fees | Total amount of Management fees expense. |
| 12 | Mortgage interest paid to banks | Total amount of Mortgage interest expense. |
| 13 | Other interest | Total amount of Other interest expense. |
| 14 | Repairs | Total amount of Repairs expense. |
| 15 | Supplies | Total amount of Supplies expense. |
| 16 | Taxes | Total amount of Taxes expense. |
| 17 | Utilities | Total amount of Utilities expense. |
| 18 | Depreciation expense or depletion | Total amount of Depreciation and/or depletion expense |
| 19 | Other | Total amount of Other expenses. |
| 20 | Total Expenses | The sum of rows 5 - 19 |
| 21 | Income less expenses | The sum of rows 3 and 4 less row 20. |
Would you like to learn more about the Schedule E report and how it applies to your real estate business? Click here to read more.