Property vs. Business Tags affect Tax Planner Data

Cyclist

OK - I've been using Quicken for 30+ years. I tried using Rental Property for a couple of years to manage my rentals, but I found it less than desirable, especially in handling overpayments/credits, so retuned to running my rentals thru the Business (Customer Invoices) interface.

My problem is that even though I use the category "Rental Income" (which is associated with Tax line Schedule E Rents), the income does NOT flow thru to Schedule E in tax planner.

In fact, it appears that unless any transaction (even one that originates from a checking account) is tagged with any tag other than one of type "Property", it will NOT flow thru to the planner.

Unfortunately, a "Property" type tag cannot be selected when creating an invoice in the Customer Invoices ledger (they're not even visible). You CAN select a "Property" type tag from a non-business ledger (such as a checking account), which will then flow to the Tax Planner (if you don't do this, it won't even though you use Rental Income as the category).

Not sure if this would have been the case had I never used the Rental Property section (maybe I'll create a new dataset and test), but this shouldn't be the case no matter what!

If the invoices created in Customer Invoices (a Business ledger) using a Rental Income category (associated with Schedule E) showed up as Schedule C income in the tax planner, it "might" make some sense (not really), but instead, the income just evaporates with respect to Tax Planner, not showing anywhere.

IMO, Categories (provided they are associated with a Tax Line) should always flow to the corresponding section of Tax Planner (regardless of what ledger they originate from), whereas Tags provide a way of "grouping" transactions. Any comments by a Quicken moderator?

[edited for readability]

Cyclist

So, as a follow-up I created a new dataset and first created a Checking Account. Entered a transaction using the Rents Received category (associated with Schedule E income). This income showed in Tax Planner.

Then created an A/R account (Business) and created an invoice using an Item that was set with Rents Received as its' category. That also flowed to Tax Planner. I then created a property in Rental Properties with an associated tenant and went credited a rental payment to the tenant. As soon as I did that, ONLY that transaction showed in Tax Planner and the former two no longer were included.

As suspected, once Rental Property has been used, any use of a category associated with rental income when entered outside of Rental Properties in Quicken will not flow to the Tax Planner. I've never had the same problem with expenses (mine have always flowed thru to Tax Planner), BUT I never entered them using Rental Property (always directly in Checking or CC account).

To test I tried entering a rental expense directly into the checking account of my test dataset. As expected (based on my prior experience), it flowed thru to the Tax Planner. I then entered a rental expense from the Rental Properties section. Sure enough, it now showed in the Tax Planner, but my former checking account entry disappeared.

Looks like A/R and A/P are affected independently, but once used from Rental Properties, they must solely be used for any Rental Property transactions if you want the data to flow into Tax Planner. This is (IMO) a major bug.

[edited for readability]

Cyclist

As a final follow-up, I was wondering what would happen if I just tried to delete the property from Rental Properties. Bottom line is you can't if there are any associated transactions, so once you go down the Rental Property road, there literally is no turning back.