Right - the origination fee is it's own charge. It's essentially the lender's "commission" for originating the loan. It's not prepaid interest, it's not deductible.
There isn't anything in the tax code that says that points are deductible. What's deductible is interest. Since interest is sometimes paid up front, in the form of points, the IRS allows a deduction for that up-front interest. Just because other charges are also sometimes calculated as "points" (meaning calculated as a % of the loan) doesn't make them deductible. If the lender says, "My fee for originating the loan is 1% of the loan balance", that doesn't make it deductible. If the lender says, "If you pay 1% of the loan balance up front, then the interest rate for the remaining loan term drops by 0.25%", then that's prepaid interest, and it's deductible. This is why there are separate lines for these items in the HUD-1, lines 801 and 802. Line 803 is then the sum of those 2, which is the total paid to and retained by the lender when the loan is created (originated), aside from escrow amounts which are stated separately.
Publication 936 says:
"Amounts charged by the lender for specific services connected to the loan are not interest. ... You cannot deduct these amounts as points either in the year paid or over the life of the mortgage."
Those 9 tests listed in a previous answer have to do with deducting the points *in full in the year paid*. That's already assuming the points represent prepaid interest. That is, those 9 tests don't determine whether or not the points *are* prepaid interest.
