"Basically, what the buyer paid to you for property taxes, I would expect was subtracted from your cost basis. But with the undefined settlement statements in use today, that may not be true."
I haven't seen a closing statement recently but based on your original post it sounds like the credit for property taxes paid by the seller was readily identifiable. Of course the credit doesn't affect the cost basis of the property, it affects how much cash and loan you must put into the closing. That seller's credit gets deducted from your end of year payment of taxes, (in an accounting sense, not in the sense that it affects the check amount itself), in coming to the net deduction you claim.
