How does ACF Rental Cash Flow help me in filing tax return?

In the system, the income and the expenses you entered are by tax categories. The system totals the income and expenses for the tax year for each property. You simply carry them onto schedule E, or into tax software.

Or if you use an accountant, you may choose to use "export to file" feature, and forward to your accountant the Excel file or HTML file. This feature may help to save you $$$ on accountant fees.

Receiving and returning of security deposits do not have tax consequences. In CA, you return the full amount plus interest to the tenant when after the tenant moved out. If you use a portion of the security deposit for cleaning fees or late fees, you need to enter them as income.

For depreciation items, if you use a tax software, you enter each of them to the tax software. The tax software should calculate it based on the nature of the item, the depreciation method used, and the property location (e.g. Gulf Opportunity Zone). If you use accountant, he/she will figure this out for you. Please refer to IRS publication 527 for detail.

What's the purpose of ACF Rental Cash Flow exporting data to file?

File export creates an .XML file. This file can be opened by Excel 2002, 2003, or 2007. Please refer to the help contents for how to export, and to open the file.

Within Excel, you can further format the data, or perform additional calculations. Afterward, you may choose to email the file to your accountant for tax filing - including rental income, expenses, and depreciation.

From Excel, you may choose to save the file as .HTML. This file then can be opened by any browser.