I made a 40,000 donation in 2016 when I got $3k reduced from my income. In 2018 I would have expected TT to show a $3k deduction for many years. What am I missing?

[jon2041]

I had a loss and that carry forward shows on my return. My donation does not appear to be carried forward.

[rjs]

The charitable contribution carryover and the capital loss carryover are completely separate and independent.

The $3,000 subtracted from your ordinary income in 2016 was for the capital loss. Any capital loss that you could not use in 2016 would be carried over to future years until it's used up. But more than $3,000 of the loss carryover can be used in one year. If you had capital gains in 2017 or 2018, the loss carryover would first be used to offset capital gains, up to the full amount of the gains. If the loss carryover is more than the capital gains for the year, up to $3,000 of the remaining loss would be subtracted from ordinary income. If you had enough capital gains in 2017 to use up the loss carryover from 2016, there would not be any capital loss carryover on your 2018 tax return.

The capital loss carryover from the previous year appears on Schedule D lines 6 and 14. If $3,000 is used to reduce ordinary income, there would be a negative $3,000 on Form 1040 line 13 for 2016 and 2017, or Schedule 1 line 13 for 2018.

You could have gotten a deduction for the full amount of your $40,000 donation on your 2016 tax return, unless your total donations were more than 50% of your Adjusted Gross Income (AGI). (The limit is less than 50% for certain less-common types of donations.) If you exceeded the 50% limit, the excess would be carried over to the next year. The charitable contribution carryover from the previous year appears on Schedule A line 18 for 2017, and Schedule A line 13 for 2018. The carryover is added to your other donations for the subsequent year. It would not appear as a direct subtraction from your income. And there is no $3,000 figure involved in the calculation of a charitable contribution carryover.

For TurboTax to correctly handle either type of carryover, you had to transfer your information from the previous year's tax return when you started your 2017 and 2018 tax returns. Did you do that for both years, transferring from 2016 when you started your 2017 tax return, and transferring from 2017 when you started your 2018 tax return?

Since you are using the CD/Download TurboTax software, switch to forms mode and look at the Carryover Worksheet. Capital loss carryovers are on lines 12 and 13. Charitable contribution carryovers from the previous year are on line 26.

[Anonymous]

if your 2016 taxable income before charitable contributions was high enough all of the $40,000 of contributions would have been used in that year.    if for 2016 any was not deductible by reason of taxable income limitation, the leftover  would have to be carried to 2017 and a determination made of whether it was all used up,  if there was still a remainder unused, it could be carried to 2018.   you need to carefully check 2016 and 2017 because if you missed deducting anu carryovers in earlier years,  the IRS does not allow you to forgo amending prior years and using the 2016 carryover in 2018.  Actually the IRS does not require you to amend 2017 but you must compute any carryover to 2018 as if the proper amount was deducted in 2017