TurboTax (I use Premier, if that matters) assumes certain tax deductions from the start, given your personal information. The child credit tax is one example. But this assumption confuses things for me, as a credit of X dollars is applied after adding my W2....but then removed after adding my wife's W2. In other words, I know from that the child credit doesn't apply to us given our MAGI, but TurboTax applies it in intermediate stages, resulting on large variations on the amount owed that have nothing to do with the W2s themselves.
It can go the other way around too. This year it's the first time I used a dependent care FSA. I noticed that TT does not subtract the $5K of the dependent care FSA from the taxable income upon adding my W2. Presumably what it is happening is that TT waits for the "Deductions & Credits" section to see which is the most beneficial, the dependent care FSA or the dependent care tax credit. Again this is super-confusing, as TurboTax shows a taxable income that doesn't match that of the W2 (only to apply the FSA deduction in the "Deductions and Credits" section)
Is there a way to force TT to avoid applying certain "smarts" until later? Basically, what I'm looking for is that, if I add my W2, the amount showed as owed doesn't assume anything about how things are going to look in the end. In my examples, that means not applying the child tax credit, but applying the dependent care FSA deduction (because this one comes from the W2)
