Income taxes opinion

I am new to posting but I have a question about income taxes. Is there a way that you can have someone else check your taxes after they have been efiled. The reason being my husband and I bought our first house this year and we thought we would have been getting a much higher return. Last year we owed but we thought with the house this year and all the deductibles that we would have gotten back more. Any opinions? TIA

Re: Income taxes opinion

You can probably look over your return and make sure your mortgage income, real estate taxes, are on there for the house, also did you file the seperate form for the first time homebuyer credit probably not if you e-filed, that would be an additional $8000

Re: Income taxes opinion

We amended our last years taxes for the 8000 credit. I just have a feeling that something is wrong with them and the person who does our taxes is a friend so I feel akward with the whole situation.

Re: Income taxes opinion

Since you already took the credit last year, maybe they are right. I think you can only deduct:

mortgage interest,
property taxes,
a few of the home improvement credits,
points, if any, and
PMI, if any.

I guess you can check and see if all of those deductions are listed on your form or walk into an H&R Block and ask them to check. I remember hearing that they would review your taxes for free.

I can tell you that we were surprised with our return this year too. We bought a house in July and are still paying!!! We only have half a years worth of payments and they dont add up to enough to chnage anything.

Message edited 3/6/2010 9:43:43 AM.

Re: Income taxes opinion

Posted by OStewarts

Since you already took the credit last year, maybe they are right. I think you can only deduct:

mortgage interest,
property taxes,
a few of the home improvement credits,
points, if any, and
PMI, if any.

I guess you can check and see if all of those deductions are listed on your form or walk into an H&R Block and ask them to check. I remember hearing that they would review your taxes for free.

I can tell you that we were surprised with our return this year too. We bought a house in July and are still paying!!! We only have half a years worth of payments and they dont add up to enough to chnage anything.

Re: Income taxes opinion

can't say if its right or not but depending on when you bought your home, you may not have as much mortgage interest and PMI to deduct. Remember, a deduction is NOT a credit. A deduction just lowers your over all income on which you are taxed; it's a credit that is a dollar for dollar reduction of the tax you are paying.

Re: Income taxes opinion

Re: Income taxes opinion

The other thing to remember is that you used to claim the standard deduction probably. So the impact of your house is all your deductions minus what you used to deduct. KWIM. So for example, if you itemize and deduct 20k but the standard was 10k, you only have an additional 10k.

I felt the same way last year with our first year. I thought it was going to be this HUGE tax benefit, and it was def less than I thought.