Richard,
You are correct. I called TT directly after I posted this and got it straightened out. This is the first moment I've had to get back here and post an update. When taking the standard deduction, you should NOT check the box to include the 1098 from your mortgage company. Later on TT will ask about excess mortgage interest and excess real estate taxes and that's where you enter the info from the 1098. I've never had this situation before, and never have excess interest or real estate taxes, so I breezed through those questions and missed the bullet point about still entering them if you take the standard deduction. I still have to figure out where to enter the mortgage insurance, because it's still ending up incorrectly on line 10 at the moment.
What brought this about in the first place is the fact that TT asks for all of the business stuff before asking about personal stuff and before determining whether to itemize or take the standard deduction. What is troubling about the whole thing is that TT did not throw a flag at the end of the return when it ran the smart check or whatever it's called. I only discovered it by accident when I went back to check something else and decided to read the IRS instructions on form 8829. TT really should have caught that. Anyway, mostly fixed now. I will say, the person I got on the phone when I called TT was immensely helpful.
