Mortgage Interest Deduction Issues

[user63]

I originally purchased my house in 2016 and refinanced in 2021. I did not do any kind of cash-out refinance. My loan was "sold" by my lenders a couple of times in 2021 and once in 2022. For 2022, I have two 1098 forms, the first showing a mortgage interest paid of $ 3,400 and the second one for $ 16,600. I have another $ 11,000 in possible itemized deductions ($ 10,000 in state taxes, and $1,000 in donations), and so definitely need to itemize my deductions this year. However, no matter how I enter and re-enter my 1098s (using all the ideas people posted in 2020 and 2021), Turbotax online refuses to include my mortgage interest as a deduction. I did not have any issues doing this last year.
I noted that there were some issues with Turbotax software that were fixed close to the filing season deadline in 2020 and 2021. I tried all of those, and none seems to work this year.

[Vanessa A]

Is it showing on your Schedule A and not on your final summary screen or is it not being included in your Schedule A at all? 

If it is not being included in your Schedule A as an Itemized Deduction and you have other Itemized expenses that you should be able to Itemize instead of taking the standard deduction, you can go back through and answer all the mortgage interest questions again, being sure that you selected that the mortgage was used to buy, build or substantially improve the home that the loan secured (assuming it was).  Then continue through to the end.  

If you are using TurboTax Online, and have not paid yet, you can look at your 1040 form by selecting Tax Tools>>Tools>>View Tax Summary>>Preview My 1040.  You can then look at line 12 to see if the amount includes your mortgage interest.  If it does, then you are good to go.  If it does not, then does it match the standard deduction for your filing status?

If you have paid, you can go to print mode and look at your Schedule A to see what expenses were and were not included.   Your mortgage interest will show on line 8b of your schedule A. 

There is also a known issue some users are experiencing with the Mortgage Interest.  If you try the above steps and the Mortgage Interest deduction is not being applied properly you can sign up here for notifications when the issue is resolved. 

@user63

(Edited 2/22/23 @ 11:22AM PST)

[user63]

Hi Vanessa. Because the Standard Deduction was wrongly calculated as higher, Turbotax didn't create a Schedule A at all for me. 

After some trial and error, I was able to solve the problem as follows: 

- Deleted the 1098 information that I had previously entered (so as to start with a clean slate)

- Entered my two 1098s (as issued by the Banks) with the older one first

- At this point TurboTax says that some items need to be reviewed

- Do NOT try to review and fix things yet

- Instead hit "Continue" or whatever lets you get to the next screen

- TurboTax gives a prompt stating that it calculated X as the deductible, but you can edit it

- Be absolutely sure that your numbers are valid (i.e. meet IRS criteria for deductible mortgage interest), and enter them

- Hit "Next" or equivalent

- Now TurboTax gives you the option of reviewing the 1098 forms again. Go ahead and enter the extra information requested by TurboTax

At this point, a Schedule A was created, and the values look good.