Estimate your rental income and expenses for Schedule E (Form 1040). See which line each item maps to, calculate your net rental income or loss, and preview the number a mortgage lender would start from. Everything runs in your browser.
Schedule E rental income is gross rent collected minus every deductible operating expense, including depreciation. On the form itself, rent goes on line 3, the fifteen expense categories run from line 5 to line 19, they total on line 20, and line 20 subtracted from line 3 gives line 21, the net rental income or loss for that property. A negative line 21 is a rental loss, not an error. The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator on this page does that subtraction for you and labels every entry with its form line.
A mortgage underwriter reads the same form differently. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide tells lenders to add depreciation, mortgage interest, homeowners association dues, taxes and insurance back to your Schedule E net figure, then divide by months in service and subtract your full monthly payment. That is why a Schedule E showing a loss can still produce qualifying income. The lender view in the results panel shows that add-back subtotal as you type.
The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator is free, takes no account or email, and sends nothing to a server, so your rent roll and expense figures never leave the tab. Verified against the IRS page for Schedule E (Form 1040), Supplemental Income and Loss, and Fannie Mae Selling Guide B3-3.1-08, both checked 2026-08-29.
Total rent collected during the year
Expense
Schedule E Line
Underwriter worksheets such as Fannie Mae Form 1038 and Freddie Mac Form 92 add these five items back to your net income, divide by months in service, then subtract your full monthly payment. How lenders read Schedule E
Residential property depreciates over 27.5 years (building value only, not land).
Annual depreciation: $0
Click "Use this" to apply to your calculation. For the mid-month first year and a full year-by-year schedule, use the rental property depreciation calculator.
Want this calculated automatically, all year?
SealedFolio tracks every expense in the right category, then generates your Schedule E report at the click of a button.
Try SealedFolioThis calculator is for estimation purposes only and does not constitute tax advice. Consult a qualified tax professional for your specific situation. Passive activity loss rules and other limitations may affect your actual deductible amount.
Enter the rent you collected for the year, then fill in the nine expense categories that do most of the work on a rental return: mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, repairs, management fees, HOA dues, depreciation, legal and professional fees, and everything else under other expenses. The summary maps each entry to its line on Schedule E (Form 1040), totals your expenses on line 20, and shows your net rental income or loss on line 21. That is the number that flows to your Form 1040.
If you do not know your annual depreciation, the SealedFolio estimator divides your building value, cost minus land, by 27.5 years, the recovery period for residential rental property. A $220,000 building, for example, works out to $8,000 a year. Nothing you type here is saved or sent anywhere. The math runs in your browser and disappears when you close the tab.
The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator breaks out the nine biggest categories. The form itself has one income line and fifteen expense lines, and when you file, each cost belongs on its own line. This table is the reference most people are looking for when they search for a Schedule E line items calculator:
| Line | Schedule E label | What belongs here |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Rents received | Gross rent for the year before any expense, plus late fees, pet rent, and any bill a tenant paid on your behalf. This is the gross rent figure, not what landed in your bank account. |
| 5 | Advertising | Listing fees, syndication costs, yard signs, photography for a vacancy. |
| 6 | Auto and travel | Mileage to and from the property at the standard rate, or actual vehicle costs. Keep a log. |
| 7 | Cleaning and maintenance | Turnover cleans, landscaping, snow removal, pest control, gutter clearing. |
| 8 | Commissions | Leasing commissions paid to an agent for placing a tenant. |
| 9 | Insurance | Landlord or dwelling policy, umbrella coverage allocated to the rental, flood premiums. |
| 10 | Legal and other professional fees | Eviction filings, lease review, the share of your tax preparation fee attributable to the rental. |
| 11 | Management fees | The percentage a property manager takes, plus any separate leasing or renewal fee they charge. |
| 12 | Mortgage interest paid to banks | Interest only, taken from Form 1098. Principal is not deductible and does not go anywhere on Schedule E. |
| 13 | Other interest | Interest on a private note, a HELOC used for the rental, or a credit card carrying rental expenses. |
| 14 | Repairs | Work that keeps the property in its current condition. A new roof is an improvement and is depreciated instead. |
| 15 | Supplies | Filters, light bulbs, hardware, cleaning stock, small tools kept for the property. |
| 16 | Taxes | Property tax, plus local rental licence or registration taxes. Not your federal income tax. |
| 17 | Utilities | Any water, sewer, trash, gas, electric or internet you pay rather than the tenant. |
| 18 | Depreciation expense or depletion | Building value divided by 27.5 for residential, 39 for commercial, carried from Form 4562. |
| 19 | Other | HOA and condo dues, bank fees on the rental account, software subscriptions, tenant screening. Schedule E has no dedicated HOA line, which is why dues land here. |
| 20 | Total expenses | Lines 5 through 19 added together. |
| 21 | Net income or loss | Line 3 minus line 20, per property. Negative is a rental loss and is normal once depreciation is counted. |
For an estimate, put anything the SealedFolio calculator does not break out into other expenses so your total is complete, then itemize it on the correct line when you file. The SealedFolio Schedule E guide for 2026 walks through every line in plain English, and the SealedFolio rental property tax deductions guide covers what qualifies in each category. Getting receipts into these categories as they happen, rather than in April, is the whole point of the SealedFolio rental property bookkeeping system. The form and its official instructions are on IRS.gov, where the current revision is titled Schedule E (Form 1040), Supplemental Income and Loss.
A Schedule E worksheet is a scratch sheet that totals rent and expenses per property before anything is typed onto the actual IRS form. It exists because Schedule E gives you one narrow column per property and no room to show your work, so the arithmetic has to happen somewhere else. Two different worksheets share the name. The landlord version totals the year's rent and the fifteen expense categories to arrive at line 21, which is what the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator on this page produces. The lender version, such as Fannie Mae Form 1038 or Freddie Mac Form 92, starts from a Schedule E you have already filed and works forward to a monthly qualifying income figure. If you are filing, you want the first. If you are applying for a mortgage, your underwriter is filling in the second.
A rental loss on Schedule E is a negative line 21, and the SealedFolio calculator shows it in parentheses the way the form does. It is common and usually not a red flag. Depreciation alone is often enough to push a property that collects more rent than it spends into a paper loss, because it is a deduction that never leaves your bank account.
Whether you can deduct that loss this year depends on the passive activity rules. If you actively participate in the rental, meaning you approve tenants and make management decisions, you can deduct up to $25,000 of rental losses against your other income. That $25,000 allowance starts phasing out once modified adjusted gross income passes $100,000 and reaches zero at $150,000. Above that, the loss is suspended rather than lost: it carries forward on Form 8582 and can offset future rental income or the gain when you sell the property. Real estate professionals under the IRS test are outside these limits entirely. A worked case: rent of $24,000 against $19,000 of cash expenses and $8,000 of depreciation gives a $3,000 loss on line 21, fully deductible for an investor with $90,000 of income and suspended for one at $160,000.
A Schedule E property can put cash in your pocket every month and still show a loss on Schedule E, because depreciation is a deduction that costs you nothing in cash. The reverse happens too. Your mortgage principal payment drains cash every month but is not deductible, so a property can be taxable income positive while your bank account shrinks. Run the cash flow calculator to see the cash picture, and use this page for the tax picture. To measure that cash against what you actually put into the property, the cash-on-cash return calculator divides annual pre-tax cash flow by your down payment, closing costs, and upfront repairs. If you are evaluating a property you do not own yet, start with the rental income calculator instead, since Schedule E only reports what actually happened.
Search for a Schedule E calculator and most of what comes back are worksheets from mortgage insurers and the agencies, built for underwriters rather than landlords. That is because lenders qualify you using the rental income on your filed Schedule E, and they do not take line 21 at face value. The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator on this page covers both readings, the tax one and the lender one, from a single set of entries.
An underwriter starts with your net income or loss, then adds back the items you already pay through your housing payment or that never cost you cash. Fannie Mae's Selling Guide section B3-3.1-08 names five: depreciation, interest, homeowners association dues, taxes and insurance, plus documented non recurring expenses such as a casualty loss. The result is divided by the number of months the property was in service to get a monthly figure, and the full monthly payment, principal, interest, taxes, insurance and association dues, comes out of that. Fannie Mae Forms 1037, 1038 and 1038A and Freddie Mac Form 92, titled Net Rental Income Calculations, Schedule E, all follow this pattern, and the calculators published by mortgage insurers automate the same worksheet.
Here is the arithmetic on a single rental. Gross rent of $24,000 on line 3, expenses of $27,000 on line 20, giving a line 21 loss of $3,000. Add back $8,000 of depreciation, $9,600 of mortgage interest, $3,200 of property tax, $1,400 of insurance and $600 of HOA dues, and the adjusted figure is $19,800. Twelve months in service makes that $1,650 a month. Subtract the full monthly payment of $1,500 and the underwriter books $150 a month of qualifying income from a property your tax return reported as a loss. That gap between a $3,000 loss and positive qualifying income is the entire reason these lender worksheets exist.
FHA underwriting works from the same form but a shorter list. Under HUD Handbook 4000.1, an FHA lender takes the Schedule E net figure, adds depreciation back, and divides by twelve. If the property has no filed Schedule E yet, because you bought it during the year, the lender uses a percentage of the appraiser's market rent from Form 1007 instead of your tax return. Either way the underwriter wants the same per property records, which is why the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator keeps each property separate.
The lender view in the SealedFolio results panel shows the add-back subtotal from your entries, so you can see the starting number an underwriter would work from before you hand over a tax return. If depreciation is the only thing turning your rental into a paper loss, your Schedule E may still support qualifying income. The SealedFolio depreciation calculator gives you the exact year by year figure, including the mid month first year, and the rental property mortgage calculator gives you the full monthly payment the underwriter subtracts at the end.
Schedule E income calculation sheets come from four places, and which one you want depends on who is asking. The IRS publishes the form and instructions for Schedule E (Form 1040), Supplemental Income and Loss, at IRS.gov, which is the authority on what belongs on each line but does no arithmetic for you. Fannie Mae publishes Forms 1037, 1038 and 1038A as downloadable rental income worksheets, and Freddie Mac publishes Form 92 for net rental income from Schedule E along with a hosted Income Calculator; both are aimed at sellers and underwriters and assume you already have a filed return in front of you. Mortgage insurers including Enact, Essent and Arch publish their own spreadsheet versions of the same agency worksheets as free downloads for loan officers.
The fourth option is a landlord-side sheet, and that is the gap the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator fills. The agency worksheets start where your tax year ends. This page starts from the rent and receipts you have now, labels every entry with its Schedule E line, and shows the lender add-back subtotal beside the tax result, at no cost and with no download, spreadsheet or account. If you would rather the categories fill themselves in across the year, the SealedFolio desktop app files each transaction into Schedule E categories as you record it, on your own machine, so both sheets exist before filing season starts. The rent side of line 3 comes from the same place, since SealedFolio's offline rent roll software totals what each property actually collected during the year. Compare the approaches in the SealedFolio spreadsheet versus tracker breakdown, or browse every free SealedFolio real estate calculator.
Schedule E holds three properties per form, each in its own column, with the totals combined on lines 23 through 26. More than three properties means additional Schedule E pages, with one combined total across all of them. Run the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator once per property and keep the records separate for each, which is also exactly what an examiner asks for if a return is ever questioned. Depreciation in particular has to be tracked per property and carried forward for the whole 27.5 years, as the SealedFolio guide to rental property depreciation explains. SealedFolio tracks each property in its own Schedule E categories through the year, so the per property totals exist before filing season starts.
This calculator runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is saved or transmitted.
Schedule E reports rental income on line 3 and expenses on lines 5 through 19: advertising, auto and travel, cleaning and maintenance, commissions, insurance, legal and professional fees, management fees, mortgage interest, other interest, repairs, supplies, taxes, utilities, depreciation, and other expenses. Line 21 is the net income or loss for each property.
Add up the rent you collected during the year, then subtract every allowable expense including depreciation. The remainder is your net rental income. If expenses exceed income you have a rental loss. This calculator does the math and shows which Schedule E line each entry lands on.
A Schedule E worksheet totals rent and expenses per property before anything is typed onto the IRS form, because Schedule E gives you one narrow column per property and no room to show your work. The landlord version arrives at line 21, the net income or loss, and that is what the SealedFolio Schedule E calculator on this page produces. The lender version, such as Fannie Mae Form 1038 or Freddie Mac Form 92, starts from a Schedule E you already filed and works forward to a monthly qualifying income figure.
The IRS publishes Schedule E (Form 1040) and its instructions at IRS.gov. Fannie Mae publishes rental income worksheets as Forms 1037, 1038 and 1038A, Freddie Mac publishes Form 92 plus a hosted Income Calculator, and mortgage insurers including Enact, Essent and Arch republish the same agency worksheets as free spreadsheets. All of those assume a filed tax return in front of you. The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator on this page is the landlord-side version, starting from the rent and receipts you have now, free and with no download or account.
Total the rent you collected for the year, including late fees, pet rent and any bill a tenant paid for you, which is line 3. Subtract every deductible operating expense from lines 5 through 19, including depreciation on line 18, which gives your total on line 20. Line 3 minus line 20 is line 21, your net rental income or loss for that property. The SealedFolio Schedule E calculator does that subtraction as you type and labels each entry with its form line.
Often, yes. If you actively participate in the rental you can deduct up to $25,000 of losses against other income. The allowance starts shrinking once modified adjusted gross income passes $100,000 and is gone at $150,000. Disallowed losses are not lost, they carry forward to future years.
Underwriters start with your net income or loss, then add back depreciation, mortgage interest, homeowners association dues, property taxes, insurance, and documented non recurring expenses, because your housing payment is counted separately. Fannie Mae Selling Guide section B3-3.1-08 names those five add-backs. They divide by the months the property was in service and subtract the full monthly payment. Fannie Mae Form 1038 and Freddie Mac Form 92 both follow this method, and the lender view above shows the same starting number.
Most rentals belong on Schedule E. Schedule C applies when you provide substantial services to guests, things like daily cleaning or meals, which makes the activity look more like a hotel than a rental. Plain long term rentals, and most short term rentals without hotel style service, stay on Schedule E.
Keep a lease for every tenant, bank statements showing rent deposits, receipts or invoices for each expense, a mileage log if you deduct auto and travel, and the depreciation schedule for each property. Schedule E holds three properties per form, each in its own column, so keep records separated by property rather than pooled.
The current Schedule E (Form 1040) and its instructions are published on IRS.gov and the SealedFolio Schedule E guide for 2026 walks through every line in plain English.
Yes, for planning. This free Schedule E calculator estimates your numbers before you file. For the return itself, transfer the totals into your tax software or hand your records to a preparer. SealedFolio tracks every transaction in Schedule E categories through the year so the totals are ready at filing time.
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