As I said last week, I will be dedicating this month to tax season on my blog. I am doing this in an effort to help my clients and readers prepare themselves for their current tax filings, as I know this is top of mind for most people at this time of year. Today, I will focus on what documents you need to collect, or keep, from your home closing last year to help reconcile your taxes.

For starters, you want to get your settlement documentation. This was all of the paperwork given to you at closing with all of the fine print and legal jargon. But within that paperwork is some very important information. This paperwork will tell you how much you spent in closing costs, how much your interest costs will be, how much tax you paid, and if you paid any points. It will also explain any mortgage insurance costs associated with your loan.

Of those five piece of information, only the interest will be sent to you again as an official tax form. Your lender will send you a form 1098 for the interest paid from the date of closing through December 31^st. Everything else is on you to properly calculate and report. If you do your own taxes, you will want to be very careful in how you report these items to be sure you don’t miss a tax write off. If you use a CPA, you can simply give that paperwork to him or her and they will take it from there.

If you sold a house last year as well as buying one, you will also want all of the paperwork from the sale. Depending upon the gains or losses from the sale, there could also be taxable consequences (short or long term capital gains or losses). And those gains or losses could be mitigated, in whole or in part by the purchase, depending upon the dollar amounts and timeframe.

For these reasons, I would recommend hiring a good CPA to review this paperwork with you. It could be the difference in thousands of dollars in taxable liability.

If you have any questions about mortgages, or how to get one in Michigan, please contact me. And if you have anything to add about the paperwork needed at tax time from a home purchase, please leave a comment.