Deleted

[bender]

.

[seattlecyclone]

AMT is essentially a separate tax system, one that does not care one bit about how much you pay for your mortgage. You end up paying the higher of what the AMT system says you owe compared to what the non-AMT system says you owe. If you're paying AMT, getting rid of your mortgage interest won't cause your taxes to go down. If anything, it could cause your taxes to go up if it would cause your tax under the non-AMT system to be higher than your tax under the AMT system.

[ThriftyTechie]

Do you have high state income tax? If not, you shouldn't be hitting AMT at all. AMT usually just cancels out deductions like state income tax, property tax. Mortgage interest deduction is not affected but home equity loan interest is.

[seattlecyclone]

Looking back at the AMT instructions, I was wrong before when I said that mortgage interest is not deductible under the AMT. It looks like it usually is. The original mortgage you take out to buy your home is deductible under the AMT rules, and so is any part of a refinancing up to the amount still owed on the original mortgage at the time of refinancing. A loan against your home equity that you take out after the initial purchase, or the "cash out" part of a refinance are not deductible under the AMT.

[ZiziPB]

The mortgage interest deduction is one of the few deductions allowed under AMT.  State taxes (income, property) are not deductible under the AMT system.