Excess mortgage interest home office

[demens13]

Very confused by the 2 statements under Excess mortgage interest section in home office deduction

1 - If you have excess mortgage interest and it's included in the $XX (entire home) mortgage interest reported for this home office, enter 0

2 - If you have a mortgage, but are not itemizing deductions, enter your mortgage interest here.

BOTH statement are true in my case and TurboTax instructions say to enter different things. Please clarify.

[JohnW152]

Since have a mortgage and you're not itemizing your deductions, just enter your mortgage interest.

You'd use option 1 if you were itemizing and claiming mortgage interest, but has excess mortgage interest, which would be interest you aren't allowed to claim as an itemized deduction. 

This would include:

• Mortgages in excess of $750,000 ($375,000 if married filing separately), taken out after December 16, 2017 and used to buy, build, or improve your home
• Mortgages in excess of $1,000,000 ($500,000 if married filing separately), taken out between October 13, 1987 and December 16, 2017 and used for purposes other than to buy, build, or improve your home. For example, you took out a home equity loan and paid off your credit cards and bought a car

[demens13]

one of the options disappears if a few pages prior to this, you unselect the check box to include mortgage interest for this home office. the direction instruct you to unselect this check box if you are taking the standard deduction.

the problem is that i had the itemized deduction set, but it dropped below standard because a fraction of the mortgage interest went to the home office.

i would actually prefer to take the itemized deduction and keep all the mortgage interest there, instead of some of it going to the home office. is this an option? can i chose not to include mortgage interest under home office but still include property tax, etc. 

[DMarkM1]

Yes.  On the first page that list your mortgage loans (1098s entered in Mortgage topic) do not select the "Yes".  That will exclude the mortgage interest from being considered/divided for the home office.  

Later in the interview select "No" for the excess mortgage interest calculation.  

The next few pages will include an option to include property taxes in the home office calculation.