Question

Home Office Deduction to Include Mortgage Interest and RE Taxes

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 16, 2021
1 reply
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Originally entered Mortgage Interest and RE Taxes from 1098 in the Your Home Section under Deductions & Credits. Claiming a Home Office Deduction also. Total Mortgage Interest appears in Home Office section with the box checked for 'Yes, include for this home office deduction.' Question is why does TT say, "if you're not itemizing deductions, uncheck the 'Yes, include for this home office deduction'"??? Can't you still claim the Home Office Deduction even if you're not itemizing deductions??? Why do you need to uncheck this box?

Similar verbiage for Real Estate Taxes in the Home Office section. TT says 'If you paid real estate taxes but are not itemizing deductions, do not enter your real estate taxes here. Enter them as excess real estate taxes later.' What?? I think I did this 2 years ago and ended up with double / triple the amount of RE taxes showing up as a deduction in different places. Again, I don't understand why TT says to not enter RE Taxes in the Home Office section if you're not itemizing? Can't you still claim the Home Office Deduction even if you're not itemizing deductions?

ColeenD3

Yes, ignore everything and just enter the percentage that belongs to the office. If you do itemize, then add the balance on the percentage on Schedule A.

J

JMOzAuthor

In theory what you're saying makes sense, however, TT is set-up to automatically take a percentage (based on square footage of home office to entire home) of the total amount (mortgage interest, RE taxes, etc.) entered so I don't think it's necessary to manually divide and enter the relative portion in either the Home Office section or the Deductions & Credits section if itemizing.

It's just annoying that TT has multiple places to enter this information and then has directions that lead to inaccurate or unintended double / triple reporting of expenses. These sections should be the focus of some much needed redesign / improvement, as it's been like this for many years.