By Kenneth R. Harney | Washington Post
If you’re like millions of homeowners, you recently received a familiar, innocuous-looking document from your lender. Called Form 1098, it totes up how much interest you paid on your mortgage last year. Your lender is required by law to fill it out and send it to the IRS.
But there are key differences in this year’s form that are easy to miss yet potentially important to you — differences that could trigger an audit by the IRS.
Under an obscure statutory change buried in a federal highway bill that passed Congress in the summer of 2015, your lender must now disclose more information to the IRS about your loan, including the amount of the outstanding principal balance at the beginning of the year, the origination date of your mortgage and the address of the home securing the loan.
