Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Does anyone know if you can claim property taxes along with your mortgage interest as an itemized deduction? We have had our taxes done by an accountant for over 5 years and I can't see in the past where property tax was ever taken as an itemized deduction....
No, this is nothing new. I would go back to your CPA and have him/her do amended returns for the years in question.....they should do it free of charge since they missed it the first time around!
A HUGE part of your deduction and its been around a long-time... very very standard deduction.
If your accountant has not been doing it I would fire them for negligence... that is such a basic deduction after mortgage interest and charitable cash gifts - NO excuse for missing.
-oh! - only fire them AFTER they go back and do all the ammended returns for FREE - no way would I pay for their negligence.
Even if you were negligent in not giving them the informaiton, it should have been very evident to them that you would have property taxes since you had mortgage interest.
Hopefully they have been doing it and you just missed it when you looked at the Schedules.
We have a new accountant now that we are here in TX & I am sure they won't miss that because the property tax is just so much higher & honestly I pay more attention to it here because it is 3 times as high (over $6000 yearly versus $1900 yearly in our prior state!!)...I am thinking I am just missing it on our prior returns...maybe she did list it on the schedule. I will probably take our old returns in to our new accountant and have them take a look.
Does anyone know if you can claim property taxes along with your mortgage interest as an itemized deduction? We have had our taxes done by an accountant for over 5 years and I can't see in the past where property tax was ever taken as an itemized deduction....
Yes, absolutely. You might investigate another accountant if your property taxes weren't deducted, and you can likely file amended returns and get additional refund from previous years.
Invest in TurboTax or similar program. They do a great job of asking questions about deductible expenses, including property taxes.
The idea of the Standard deduction is that if you were to add up all taxes that you pay through-out the year, it might equal the standard deduction.
We used to keep track of our taxes and we commonly had more in taxes than the standard deduction.
I have known folks, who when they buy a new automobile the sales tax on that vehicle is enough to justify tracking all sales taxes over the year.
Since retiring how much I pay in taxes is much lower now, so we no longer sum our taxes.
However such is common among folks who make a hobby out of staying on top of their income tax filing.
If you desired to stop paying income taxes entirely, this is one step that could help you in that direction. Courses on 'tax planning' would teach you other areas to increase your write-offs as well.
To make things easier when you look at your past returns to check on if your property taxes were deducted, they are located on line 6 of your schedule A form. Line 7 should be the taxes you paid for your car registration(new tabs)
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
