TT NOT RECOGNIZING MORTGAGE INTEREST DEDUCTION

The Child Tax Credit and the Foreign Taxes Credit are not used as itemized deductions.

The total of all your itemized deductions, SALT capped at $10,000, Mortgage Interest, Charitable donations have to exceed the standard deduction for your filing status to have any tax benefit.

Look at Schedule A of your tax return.  Click on Forms in the upper right of the desktop program screen.  The Schedule A will be listed on the left side of the Forms mode screen.

After you entered the relevant information, did you come across a screen like the one in the screenshot below?

I was unable to reproduce a scenario where, when properly entered, the mortgage interest did not factor into the standard/itemized deduction calculation.

so is your mortgage interest $7,300 or more? if not, standard beats itemized.    in forms mode look at schedule A.   if it's more but not showing up on schedule A, you entered something incorrectly.   have you run updates? 

Mortgage interest on personal use real estate, such as your primary residence or 2nd home is reported on SCH A. There is a $10K cap on the amount of *PERSONAL* mortgage interest you can claim. Additionally, there is a $10K cap on the amount of state and local taxes (SALT) that you can claim. All of this goes on the SCH A.

Now, until the total of all *allowed* itemized deductions on the SCH A exceed your standard deduction, the standard deduction is better for you. The itemized deductions *do* *not* *help* until they exceed your standard deduction.

So if filing joint your standard deduction for 2018 is $24,000. So if your itemized deductions do not exceed that, there is no need for your to itemize at all, since the standard deduction will be the better deduction for you.

Hello,

I'm experiencing the same issue w/TT not recognizing home mortgage interest. I've removed biz use of home completely and it's still having the same problem.

Did you find a solution?

Thank you

As Joe Biden would say, "Here's the deal jack..."

Trying to answer your SPECIFIC question, no ratholes please, here is how I SOLVED the problem:  There seems to be a disconnect within TT so that Box 7 on your 1098 needs to be checked after all.  Somehow within TT an unchecked Box 7 does not then look at Box 8 to confirm your address, hence even if you indicated that the loan was secured by your property, the benefit does not come through.

Said differently, checking Box 7 resulted in my mortgage interest listing correctly in the Home Interest Worksheet, which then listed correctly in Schedule A, which then allowed my deduction to reduce my tax liability.  This little Box 7 exercise was not needed for my 2019 taxes, but for some reason the "bug" appeared for 2020.