My husband and I received half of our Child Tax Credit last year and are eligible for another $3000. Turbox is not showing it as a refund. Anyone know what the issue is?

[gobirdcurly]

I have tried researching this and reviewed all of our data, including for our children. Why is turbotax not calculating this as a refund? Turbotax suggests we are eligible for 3k total when really we are eligible for 6k total (half of this already received in 2021). We have also received the tax document stating this. Am I trying to file too early? Thank you.

[rjs]

You don't automatically get a refund of the $3,000. It's a credit that is applied against your tax for the year. If line 28 on your Form 1040 is $3,000 you are getting the full credit.

Have you entered your income? If not, enter at least some income and see if you then get the credit.

If you have not already gone through the Child Tax Credit section of TurboTax, do it now and see if you get the credit. In the Search box type "child tax credit" (without the quotes), then click the link that says "Jump to child tax credit."

Were both of your children under 18 at the end of 2021?

Did you live in the United States for more than half of 2021? Did you answer Yes when TurboTax asked you that question?

In the Dependents section on Form 1040, is the box checked in the Child Tax Credit column for both children? If not, TurboTax determined that the child for whom the box is not checked does not qualify for the credit. You have to review the entries for that child to find out why.

[Critter-3]

First the Refund-O-Meter is only correct once all your income and expenses have been entered and the program is fully operational. With each entry of income or expenses the meter will continue to vary as the program recalculates the return with each step you take.  If this annoys you then turn off the meter until the end.   

Next ... the program interview flow is  poorly designed  and it  will give you a false refund total early in the interview.   The program gives you 100% of the CTC and the third stimulus credit once you have completed the MY INFO tab early in the interview  and  then much   later in the deductions & Credits tab  you are asked how much of these credits you got in advance and then the credits are adjusted for the advance payments which will show as a reduced refund amount or an increase in the balance due.  

Same thing for the EIC … the program gives you the credit in the refund posted BEFORE  you get to the EIC portion of the interview.  At that point it asks you a couple of questions that could possibly REMOVE the credit already reflected in the refund posted  which is also a point of confusion for many. 

One day the programmers may  get this changed to more timely reflect the section you are working on as you work on it and not way in advance.  Users are not happy when they see the refund being reduced without a good explanation.

[rjs]

Don't focus on what TurboTax says. Look at the actual tax forms.

You will not see the full $6,000 credit on Form 1040, because the $3,000 that you already received is subtracted from it. The only place you will see $6,000 is on Schedule 8812. The payments that you already received are subtracted on that schedule, and only the $3,000 that is still owed to you appears on Form 1040.