One reason I can think of if you are filing Married Filing Separately. If your spouse has already filed and claimed the standard deduction, you cannot itemize. Other than that reason, I can't think of any situation that will limit you from claiming an itemized deduction. Check in your deductions and credits section and scroll through your entries. There are other possible reasons listed below. Make note if you have medical expenses. There is a AGI limitation for medical expenses that disallow the first 7.5% of your AGI. This may be one reason that your itemize expenses did not exceed your standard deduction. Also if you entered property taxes, this is capped at $10,000. Scroll through your deduction and credit section. When you come to a page that says Based on what you just told us, the Standard Deduction is best for you, it will tell you what your standard and itemized deductions are. You can even view a breakdown of your itemized expenses in this screen. in this screen you have an option to change to an itemized deduction if you wish. That option is toward the bottom of the screen.

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V677LS

Level 2

Question

Why can't I choose itemized deduction (which is larger than standard deduction)? It keep defaulting to the standard...

16 replies
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DaveF1006

Alumni - Intuit

One reason I can think of if you are filing Married Filing Separately. If your spouse has already filed and claimed the standard deduction, you cannot itemize. Other than that reason, I can't think of any situation that will limit you from claiming an itemized deduction. Check in your deductions and credits section and scroll through your entries. There are other possible reasons listed below.

Make note if you have medical expenses. There is a AGI limitation for medical expenses that disallow the first 7.5% of your AGI. This may be one reason that your itemize expenses did not exceed your standard deduction.
Also if you entered property taxes, this is capped at $10,000.
Scroll through your deduction and credit section. When you come to a page that says Based on what you just told us, the Standard Deduction is best for you, it will tell you what your standard and itemized deductions are. You can even view a breakdown of your itemized expenses in this screen.
in this screen you have an option to change to an itemized deduction if you wish. That option is toward the bottom of the screen.

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JB9

Level 3

I have the same question. I am filing married/joint. Both of us are over 65. It lists the standard deduction as 27,400, and our amount on Schedule A is higher, though not by much. I tried to check the box on schedule A to itemize but it will not let me do it, nor can I override. (The amounts not allowed for medical and for more than 10K property tax were already removed...so the total is what is actually allowed.) I should think TT would let me choose.

Turbo Tax also decreased the amount on my 1040... It did not put my actual amount from Schedule A onto line 12. It defaulted to the 27,400 amount. I can't override it there, either.

Then I did what was proposed by DaveF1006. TT said good news, you're getting the standard deduction. Then on the next screen, it tells me itemized would be better. The screen tells me I'm getting Federal Itemized Deductions, but I'm not... until I check the box to change my deductions. Then it says itemized is recommended. This is very contradictory! I checked the box. Interestingly the tax refund did not budge. I will have to check what the % is... I would have though the amount would change, even if it was only a few dollars.

I would like to add that just now, in looking at the standard deduction worksheet, it says the deduction is 24,800. Why7 would it say that there, but 27,400 elsewhere??? And, TT enters 27,400 on my 1040, even when I choose the itemized amount, and it tells me I've chosen itemized? This is truly puzzling!

Thoughts?

DaveF1006

Alumni - Intuit

It may be the fact that your Adjusted gross income is below the threshold for the itemized and standard deductions. This is easy to check.

If using Turbo Tax Online, go to tax tools>tools>view tax summary. Look at the third line where it says Adjusted Gross income and if it zero or below your deductions, then your refund will not change.

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JG575

Level 2

Turbotax tells me I'm Itemizing but then gives errors related to the standard deduction when doing SmartCheck. When I go to forms it's clearly taking the std deduction when I have itemized deductions of 24,878. What gives and how can I change? Seems to be based on a std deduction of 25,100 in the calculations. When I add in itemized over 25,100 it all works correctly.

JB9

Level 3

Assuming I understood your question, did you make any charitable contributions? I had this same thing happen where I tried to itemize and TT kept giving me the standard deduction. If you contributed cash to any charity, then TTax probably put up to $300 (allowed limit) of that on 1040 line 10 (a or b, I can’t remember), which then reduced your itemized deductions by that same amount. Perhaps just enough so that you didn’t qualify any more for the itemized deductions. There is a more comprehensive thread on this elsewhere in the forum that explains it better.

JB9

Level 3

Sorry, didn’t realize I was responding a few minutes ago in the same thread where this concern and charities were addressed. The other posts didn’t show on my screen. I’m guessing if you read them, you’ll find your answer.