It seems that corrections made during the Federal Review are not taken in account in the Tax calculation.
Here is my example: While going through the Federal Review process, Turbo Tax noticed I had not entered the "Provider Amount Paid" for a listed Dependent Care Provided. I entered the amount right there (in the provided box) and continued on but noticed the Federal Tax Refund did not change (which did not make sense since I had just entered a new credit expense that would normally impact the tax amount). So I went back to the Child and Dependent Care Credit section (under the Deductions & Credits process) and noticed that the expense amount for that provider was not listed (which makes sense since that is what triggered the correction request during the Review process in first place). So I entered the missing expense amount paid for that provider. When I clicked continue, the refund increased exactly by the amount I expected (20% of the amount paid entered). But that only happened because I went back to the Deductions & Credits section to make the correction (instead of relying on just making the correction during the Federal Review Process. I replicated the error many times by going back deleting an amount paid, then letting the Review process to catch the error,
and correcting it some instances in the Review process and other times going back to the Deductions & Credits process. And every time I got the same issue... TT only used to the correction in the tax calculation when I went back to the Deductions & Credit, but not when I relied on the correction in the Federal Review. It seems that the Review process will check for any blank boxes that it expects to be filled (such as having a listed Care Provider without an amount paid, which is clearly an error). But when you make a correction right in the review process, it does not care what amount you enter since it does not go back to recalculate your Tax due with this new info, it just cares that the empty box is filled with any number. To me this is clearly a bug (not a feature). TT should at least make note in their review process asking users to go back to the appropriate section to make the correction. I wonder how many users have filed their taxes incorrectly because of this bug in Turbo Tax!
posted
last updated
July 15, 2020
9:17 AM