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Article snippet: In my colleague Ben Casselman’s article this week on the Internal Revenue Service’s side-eyed guidance for all of the people rushing to prepay property taxes, he quoted some words of warning from Andy Grewal, a professor of tax law at the University of Iowa. Mr. Grewal said homeowners who usually paid their property taxes through an escrow account via their mortgage servicer could end up facing an audit if they prepaid at their local assessor’s office this time. That’s because the tax payments the individuals report to the I.R.S. on their tax forms could differ from what the banks would report on the separate forms they use when reporting mortgage activity to the government. Differing figures raise questions at the I.R.S. That got me wondering: Couldn’t you just call your bank and ask it to update the figure it puts on its own forms? It turns out the answer may be no, but this issue is not simple or consistent among banks, either. Mr. Grewal was right to worry about this issue, given the number of people with escrow accounts. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, 79 percent of borrowers had escrow accounts in 2016 from which they paid property taxes on their primary mortgage. But not all banks report property tax payments on the form they generate, Form 1098. Wells Fargo says it does report property tax payments on Line 10 of the form, which is simply labeled “Other.” And no, alas, you cannot call the bank up and ask it to add whatever you are paying on ... Link to the full article to read more