Entering ending mortgage balance wipes out my refund, why?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 3, 2019
1 reply
1 view

I had most of my taxes filled out but was waiting on Mortgage 1098. TT was showing an $800 refund until I entered my mortgage interest and tax information, specifically the Outstanding Mortgage Principal. As soon as I enter this number, my $800 refund gets wiped out and shows me owing $70 instead.

I'm married filing separately and the principal balance on the house is 267K so that's far below the 1 million dollar value I have read about where interest may no longer be deductible. I've looked all over the internet about why this may have happened or rules or laws about this and the only thing I can find is that you can't deduct mortgage interest if the value of your house is too high, but that's not the case here.

Anyone have any ideas why this may have happened?

TurboTax Premier Windows

cork2winAuthor

Level 2

No sooner did I post this question did I figure out what was wrong. I was entering the information from box 2 on the 1098 in the wrong place on TT. Box 2 goes where it asks for Box 2, the other area is asking what the balance of the loan was at the BEGINNING of 2018. Basically you need to show how much the loan was paid down during the year. Once I entered the correct info in the correct places, my refund was back. User error!