Can someone help with a form 1116 question?

[GSG]

In the interview for Form 1116 when I put a zero in the amount in the entry of "foreign qualified dividends and l.t. capital gains" I get an error message that says "This field should be at least xxxx", where xxxx is a the total foreign source income and I cannot continue.  My 1099 says the income is from dividends but they are not qualified dividends nor L.T. cap gains.  Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!

[rogge1722]

It is most likely that some portion of the 1099-div box 1b contains foreign dividends; otherwise TT would not flag it.  Thus there is a compatibility error.

The following procedure will illustrate this. Open a new spreadsheet.
Column A is used  for both qualified and unqualified dividends, aka. “Ordinary dividends”.
Column B is used for qualified dividends only.

In cell A1, insert the worldwide ordinary dividends. This is the amount in the 1099-div, box 1a.
In cell A2, insert the foreign ordinary dividends. This amount is derived from the broker’s supplemental info.
In cell A3, subtract A2 from A1.  The result is the U.S sourced ordinary dividends.

In cell B1, insert the worldwide qualified dividends. This is the amount in the 1099-div box 1b.
In cell B2, insert the foreign qualified dividends. This amount is derived from the broker’s supplemental info.
In cell B3, subtract B2 from B1. The result is the U.S. sourced qualified dividends.

Thus A1 is equal to or greater than  B1,  A2 is equal to or greater than  B2, and A3 is equal to or greater than  B3.  If any “A” is less than its corresponding “B”, there is an error. Recheck all entries..

Users with this issue usually have found A3 < B3. It turns out that they had misinterpreted the broker's instructions on calculating the amounts for A2 and/or B2.

[GSG]

Thanks for the above info; I went through your suggestion and A3>B3, so that does not appear to be the issue.  I have a total of 19 different countries and have a breakdown of ordinary and qualified dividends for each one.  (By the way, I used your technique in another post to use Dummy 1099-DIVs to get TT to show all 19 different countries, so thanks for that.)  For all countries but 3, ordinary=qualified so entering info on Form 1116 is not an issue.  For the last 3, there are ordinary dividends but they are not qualified.  When I try to enter zero for the qualified dividends, the error that I originally described occurs.  

[rogge1722]

I'm not sure why it is causing errors but if you insert the amount that TT wants and if the total foreign qualified dividends is under $20,000, it will not reduce the gross income. If you bring up the f1116 worksheet and if (1m)  is not less than (1f)  in the "Total" column,  then there is no reduction.

[GSG]

OK.  On to next Form 1116 worksheet issue.....  I only have Qualified foreign dividends but TT is giving me an error for all but one of the countries and asking me to enter values for Section 1250 capital gains and Collectibles (lines 1i and 1j).  The error message is that the line should have a value at least the amount of the qualified dividends 'based on the 1099-DIV worksheet that are linked to this country".  I've searched the worksheets and can find nothing that would indicate a value is needed here.  Any thoughts?  Thanks again for helping me through this.    

[rogge1722]

That is a software error. 1h includes the sum of 1i and 1j. If 1h is blank, insert zeroes in all three to see if that will work.  If TT insists on a minimum amount, then as long as 1h is less than $20,000, it should have no effect which means 1m is not less than 1f.