CABO for Georgia Reverse Lady writes: If you are anticipating a rough year when it comes to filing taxes,
don’t turn those forms into new year’s confetti just yet. Several key
provisions for homeowners have been retroactively renewed for 2014 and
they might provide you with some much-needed tax relief.
If you did any of these three things in 2014, you still have reason
to celebrate (OK, maybe not really celebrate, but celebrate as much as
anyone can while doing taxes).
Short sale
In the third quarter of 2014, 8.1 million homes in the United States
were seriously underwater, according to the real estate research firm
RealtyTrac. If you were a homeowner who decided to short-sell your home
last year, it’s not all bad news: Congress once again extended the
Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act.
The act made it so qualifying homeowners did not have to pay tax on
debt forgiven by a lender. Without the act’s tax shield, that forgiven
debt—up to $2 million—is seen as taxable income by the government. For
homeowners owing hundreds of thousands of dollars on a loan, that could
be a crippling amount of money owed to the IRS.
The act is retroactive, so when Congress finally renewed it in late
December, it covered short sales in 2014. Short-selling a home in 2015
is a gamble—if Congress doesn’t renew the act, you’ll have to pay taxes
on forgiven debt.
Private mortgage insurance
For people who couldn’t provide a 20% down payment, private mortgage
insurance (PMI) is a familiar expense. But if you bought your house in
2007 or afterward, you were given a break if you earned less than a
certain amount of money each year. Luckily, that provision is still
around. The bill was set to expire in 2014, but two weeks before the end
of the year, Congress extended the provision into 2015.
So if you bought a home (including vacation homes, but not rental
properties) in 2014, or any other year since 2007, you can still deduct
PMI from your taxes.
However, the PMI deduction begins phasing out when the adjusted gross
income (AGI) of the head of household, married filing jointly, or
single earner passes $100,000. For married filing separately, the
phaseout begins at $50,000 AGI.
The deduction is phased out by 10% for every $1,000 earned over the
threshold. If you pass $109,000 AGI (or $54,500 for married homeowners
filing separately), the deduction phases out completely.
Energy upgrades
If you waited until 2014 to make energy-efficient upgrades, you may
be in luck. You can claim up to $500, cumulatively, in tax credits for
energy-efficient upgrades involving the following:
-Exterior windows
-Heating and cooling systems
-Insulation
-Exterior doors
-Biomass stoves
-Heating and cooling systems
-Insulation
-Exterior doors
-Biomass stoves
This tax break is cumulative for previous years. If you claimed $400
worth of equipment in 2013, you still have only $100 to work with.
The extension of these tax provisions will help some homebuyers for
2014, but there’s no guarantee that Congress will renew them for the
2015 tax year.
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