I reviewed form 8829, and there is no indication of mortgage interest (MI) nor any mention of carrying over MI to Schedule A. I went back to the home expense deduction section of TT and backtracked to where it gives you the choice of using the simplified method or listing your own expenses. I experimented with the option to list your own expenses, and on the screen that wants to confirm how MI applies to the home office, the total MI for the home shows up, and I checked the "yes" box because I want to itemize. It says the program automatically calculates how much of the MI can be deducted for the home office, then adds the remaining interest to Schedule A. Well I checked the Schedule A form, and no mortgage interest was added. There is also a screen that asks about excess MI, but it says it exists if you have a mortgage, and we are NOT itemizing, but we want to itemize so I am selecting "no". Meanwhile, my refund automatically went down from what it was when we took the standard deduction, but as explained above, the figures I am entering total above the 24K standard deduction, so that doesn't make sense. What now?
