Rental income and expense tracker

Checked November 2026 by LAS CPA, PC. It goes with our list of the rental records to keep through the year.

What is in the file

• Start here has the instructions and a line for each property's address, type and days rented.
• Income takes one row for each payment you receive.
• Expenses takes one row for each payment you make, with a category you pick from a list.
• Mileage takes one row for each trip you drive for a rental.
• Summary adds everything up for each property and for all of them together.

The categories are the form's own. Rents go to line 3 of Schedule E, and the expense list runs from line 5, advertising, through line 17, utilities, with line 19 for anything else.

It's a plain spreadsheet with no macros. What you type stays in your copy.

Where the columns follow a tax rule

• Security deposits have their own choices on the Income sheet. A deposit you plan to return isn't income when you receive it, so the tracker keeps it out of the rent total. A deposit you keep is income in the year you keep it. A deposit meant to cover the last month's rent is advance rent, and advance rent is income in the year you receive it.
• Improvements are kept apart from repairs. You can deduct what you pay for repairs and maintenance, but not the cost of an improvement. Work is an improvement when it betters the property, restores it or adapts it to a new use. The Expenses list has a separate choice for improvements, and the Summary keeps them out of the expense total.
• Depreciation isn't tracked. It goes on line 18 and is worked out separately: a residential rental building over 27.5 years by the straight line method, and land not at all. Form 4562 is attached to the return in the year a property is first placed in service.
• The Mileage sheet records each rental trip. It takes the date, where you went, why, and the miles. The IRS also asks for the car's total miles for the year, its cost and the date its business use began, so keep those with it. The IRS says to write a trip down at or near the time you make it. Claiming any car expense on the rental schedule means filling in Part V of Form 4562.
• The mileage rate isn't built in because it changed during 2026. The standard rate is 72.5 cents a mile from January 1, 2026, through June 30, 2026, and 76 cents a mile from July 1, 2026, through December 31, 2026.
• Days rented and days of personal use go on the first sheet. Line 2 of the form asks for both. A property counts as your home for the year if your personal use is more than 14 days or more than 10% of the days it was rented at a fair price, whichever is greater.
• The Paid to column helps with the form's first question. Line A asks whether you made payments that require you to file Form 1099, and line B asks whether you filed them. For certain payments made on or after January 1, 2026, the reporting threshold rose from $600 to $2,000.

What the tracker leaves out

• It doesn't decide what is deductible, and it doesn't apply the limit on rental losses, which may take Form 8582 to work out.
• It follows the 2025 form, the newest final one. The IRS's draft of the 2026 form splits line 13, other interest, into a line for vehicle loan interest and a line for other interest. Records for 2026 will need line 13 split once the final 2026 form is out.
• It has no Virginia sheet because Virginia has no separate rental schedule. A resident's Virginia taxable income starts from federal adjusted gross income, which already includes the rental result.

• Sources: Schedule E (Form 1040) for 2025 and its instructions; the IRS's drafts of the 2026 form and instructions; IRS Publication 527 (2025) and Publication 463 (2025); Code of Virginia 58.1-322.

The tracker and this page are general information, checked in November 2026. The totals are a record of what you typed. They aren't a tax return and they aren't advice for your situation.