My fiancé and I bought a home in 2024 and are filing single. We are both on the title and loan.
I paid the down payment out of an account in my name. Shortly after purchasing, we combined our finances. Both of our paychecks go into a joint account and the mortgage payment comes out of that account. We each made enough individually to have paid the mortgage payments alone. I made more money by ~2x, so my tax liability is significantly higher.
The interest and points payments exceed the standard deduction by enough such that we would each still itemize if we split it 50%-50%.
How can I split these deductions? My understanding is that each party should deduct the amount they paid, but that is a little gray for us. I want to approach it from a "minimize combined total tax" standpoint - which means I should take 100% of the deductions and they would take the standard deduction. Is that allowed? Encouraged / discouraged?
