Deductions & credits

Hey Intuit, are you reading this?

This should be an easy fix. 

(1) The step-by-step guide never asks for the payoff date (if any) on a mortgage, even though that's part of the underlying worksheet.

(2) Then, if the origination date is earlier than 2020 it just defaults to 12 months, even if I enter the "Date loan was paid off" in the "Smart Worksheet". Ain't that a misnomer!  

(3) For a mortgage that did originate in 2020, it calculates  the proper term (e.g. 7 months).

(4) Because the program ignores pay-off dates, however, it just adds up the principal from all of them. That can erroneously cause the mortgages to exceed the $750,000 limit on interest deductions. This became evident when I looked at my CA Deductible Home Mortgage Interest Worksheet. The "average balance of all home mortgage debt" is the sum total of all the mortgages I entered, even though they didn't exist concurrently! 

(5) I found that right-clicking on that average balance box allows me to select "override" to enter the correct mortgage balance, but haven't seen how to fix that on federal yet.