How to claim two residences on tax return

[kozmicprincess]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? New Jersey

We are filing married/joint on our 2008 tax return. In 2008 we rented an apartment, and he paid mortgage and property taxes on a house, simultaneously. We want to claim the interest and property tax of the house. The problem is, we use the apartment address for all mail, so that is the mailing address I am putting on our tax return. Will that affect anything? I assume some people use PO boxes for mailing, so I would guess it doesn't matter, or does it?

The other question is, on our State return, should we claim both the apartment and the house property taxes? I can add the amounts together, but it won't allow me to show that we rented a property AND paid mortgage on one. Should we just stick with claiming the house? (use house info for all tax purposes, and just use apartment address for mailing)?

[Kiawah]

How many years have you claimed a deduction for rent, and not been audited?

[kozmicprincess]

Originally Posted by Kiawah

How many years have you claimed a deduction for rent, and not been audited?

I don't think we've claimed that at all. I really don't know, an accountant used to do it for us, but we are doing it ourselves this year.

Can someone please answer my original questions? Does our mailing address have to be the property we are claiming taxes for?

[FlyingRon]

If the home is a qualified home, you can deduct it even if you have another.

[url=http://www.irs.gov/publications/p936/ar02.html#en_US_publink100037076]Publication 936 (2008), Home Mortgage Interest Deduction[/url]

[tranquility]

While the address you receive mail at may be a fact or circumstance adding to where your "residence" is, I don't see how it is relevant here. You can deduct the mortgage interest (putting it simply) on Schedule A on your residence and one other property. (Again, simply. There may be rules depending on the facts.)

Where do you live?

Second, why are you "deducting" the rent on the apartment?

[kozmicprincess]

Originally Posted by tranquility

While the address you receive mail at may be a fact or circumstance adding to where your "residence" is, I don't see how it is relevant here. You can deduct the mortgage interest (putting it simply) on Schedule A on your residence and one other property. (Again, simply. There may be rules depending on the facts.)

Where do you live?

Second, why are you "deducting" the rent on the apartment?

Do you mean why do I not want to claim taxes on the apartment? The reason is because when I am doing the e-file, it asks for 'municipality' and doesn't let me list two. The house and the apartment are in different municipalities. I don't know if you misunderstood my original post, but I *don't* really want to deduct the apartment. As far as I know, I can really only claim taxes on the apartment in my State tax return (we can claim 18% of our annual rent paid, as taxes paid). So on the State return, we'd be combining taxes paid for both apartment and house. But, it only lets me select one municipality to which we paid. The taxes were paid to two separate municipalities, so instead of getting rejected or in trouble or something, I was thinking we should just leave off the apartment. It's not worth it anyway since it would only be like $20 more on our refund.

Anyway, I think I am just leaving off the apartment altogether. I really just wanted to be sure we won't be messed up because our mailing address on the refund will be the apartment address, but we are only claiming taxes on the house.