State and local taxes refunds - married

[turbosl2]

My wife and I got married in 2017. When i transfer my return from 2016 to 2017 it only carries my state refund, which makes sense. 

Do i have to go back and look at her 2016 return and manually add her state refund in our 2017 married filing joint taxes?

[VolvoGirl · Accepted solution]

TurboTax does not handle this. If you enter more than one state refund, it just adds them together. It does not ask separately for each refund whether you itemized last year. It just asks once after all the refunds have been entered. There is only one State and Local Income Tax Refund Worksheet, so there is no way to do the calculation separately for the taxpayer and spouse. The help for the worksheet even says that a change in marital status from last year is one of the situations it does not handle.

So either.....
If you both itemized deductions last year then add them together and enter it.
If you both took the standard deduction last year add them together and enter it.
If one person took itemized deductions and the other one took the standard deduction then only enter the one that itemized deductions.

And answer the follow up questions.