Can I defer the American Opportunity Credit and use the Tuition Deduction instead? How do I use Option 2?

You can override the Education Optimizer and select the education tax benefit you want to claim by using the following steps:

• On the top row of the TurboTax online screen, click on Search (or for CD/downloaded TurboTax locate the search box in the upper right corner)
• This opens a box where you can type in “letme” (be sure to enter exactly as shown here) and click the magnifying glass (or for CD/downloaded TurboTax, click Find)
• The search results will give you an option to “Jump to letme”
• Click on the blue “Jump to letme” link 

 

See the following TurboTax article for more details if the steps above do not work: 

 

How do I override the TurboTax Education Optimizer selection?

 

 

@bigbluedane

This opens a box where you can type in “letme”

Don't type the quotation marks (") and do not put a space between let and me.

As far as I can tell this doesn't work anymore for TurboTax Premier 2020.  When I do the search for 'letme' I keep getting links to these articles.  When I did a search for Education Credits I got a link but it just took me through the circular questions and applied the TurboTax Education Optimizer again.

Type letme  (no quotation marks, no space between let and me).

Just tried it. It's a little different this year, but still works (I have download Deluxe).

 

Type letme in the search box. When the drop down list appears, click on letme rather than "jump to letme'.

On the next drop down, click on the "jump to letme'' link

 

 

Thanks, it works.  I follow the directions too exactly.  I guess that I need to experiment. I didn't want to take a $9 tax credit and give up a whole year of potential $2500 credit in the future