Thanks - I efiled last year, guess I'll do that this year if USAA offers TurboTax for free again. I just downloaded forms and instructions to do a penciled-in rough estimate while I'm waiting for the 1099-INTs to come in. It's crazy - we're not even itemizing, we've got 2 new schedules this year and it took me a couple of hours to go through the instructions and do the schedules to find out we qualify for the "standard" $1000 real estate tax deduction the $800 "pay to work" credit without adjustments. I thought our taxes were supposed to be getting simpler - I pity the people who are trying to figure out if/how much they qualify for all the new credits Obama put out last year. And I still have to figure our state tax (CT isn't a "piggyback" state)!

Thirdfrt, Just for your information, The basic inheritance, is the cost mom paid for it and the money you received for the house, the difference is technically your capital gain, minus all fees to sell it. Ex- mom paid 5,000.00 you sold for 100,000 and had 6,000 in fees to sell the home. Technically, you made 89,000.00 on the property. I would consult a tax professional for read up online at the irs website on inheritance and capital gain. I don't think you would pay any capital gain on the house only because it was an inheritance and depending on the amount of money, which is small, you probably don't have any tax on it. You can't claim a loss on a situation where you can't prove you actually lost money by selling the property, which you didn't, because you didn't pay for the property and it has accumulated some value since your mom bought it.

Well it certainly provides an interesting contrast to the article Dave posted on your other thread. It just shows you how different "experts" can have completely opposite points of view on the same subject. I'm quite dubious about the examples presented in both articles because I think the data used to support them is carefully selected to support the approach being advocated. For example, the $300/month maintenance and 300K for major improvements over a 30-year mortgage for a house that cost less than 300K both seem pretty steep to me. Many homeowners (not I, certainly) are good at doing both these things themselves and tend to make out fairly well in buying and selling houses. It is well known on here that Dave strongly promotes using highly leveraged financing to buy houses. I personally don't think the average homeowner has the skill, stomach and/or financial discipline for doing that. I'm very suspicious of anyone who advocates a one size fits all approach. We all know ourselves better than anyone else and know what's comfortable for us. So I guess the bottom line is trust your own judgment on this one. I'm sure you'll do fine either way because you are a very financially responsible person. That's the one trait that separates the financial winners from the losers. The rest is just window dressing.

"herwise, they are just creating a cost with no clear benefit to consumers. A few select groups might benefit, but overall, we suffer." Who defines "consumers"? The largest benefit of the mortgage deduction still goes to the middle class. The bottom edge may not get a large benefit, and the upper edge may not 'need' the benefit. These are artifacts of how the deduction plasy ageist the standard deduction. At the low end the standard deduction is better than a low deduction, at the high end the deduction has less import since other methods of reducing tax liability are available. If a change in the overall preference for ownership over renting is the goal, that would create different incentives (and tax rules to drive the goal).