How to Claim a Mortgage or Other Interest Expense as a Deduction

Male: Can I claim my mortgage or other interest expense as a deduction?
Art: Mortgage interest is definitely a deduction. There are certain other interest expenses that are a deduction. Personally, interest in credit cards is not deductable at all. Now some folks who are listening have self employed businesses and you use a credit card for that self employed business to buy pay for business expenses. And you carry a balance on that card, that interest is business interest, that should be deducted on schedule C not on schedule A. mortgage interest add up the forms that you get from your mortgage companies, first, second, home equity lines, couple of things to remember here. There are two lines on schedule A, one line is for the forms that you get from the, from your mortgage holders. If you add those up, if you’re paying a mortgage to the person from whom you purchase the house, they took back the financing. That goes on a separate line on schedule A. And the last category of interest would be investment interest. So I borrowed money to buy stocks and bonds for example, when on margin at a brokerage house. That is called investment interest. That’s deductable only to the extent that I have investment income. That is dividends and interest from the investment account. So there are categories of interest on schedule A, the most obvious one is mortgage interest. And please remember to watch the forms that you get from your mortgage holders, because the first copy of that form went directly to the Internal Revenue Service. So make sure you get that number correctly done because that’s part of the document matching program that IRS does.


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