Thank you @bmwolk @ToddL99!
Both your approaches yield the desired and accurate result of applying 100% of the mortgage interest paid towards the deduction i.e. on line 8a of Schedule A (in my case the mortgage balance is less than the 750K limit). However, the Deductible Home Mortgage Interest Worksheet in TT Premier still has some funky math with double counting. It just seems to not transfer this error onto Schedule A. Very strange.
Overall, this seems to be a common scenario based on the number of users reporting this problem in the Community in successive tax years. Disappointing to see TT is not handling this in a user friendly manner in the step by step, and we have to resort to workarounds to get the right deduction.
