I find at times that the instructions are more complicated than they need to be, and this seems to be one of those cases!
Perhaps the instructions were modified from prior years when the total tax would have been on a different line number depending on whether the taxpayer filed on form 1040, 1040A, or 1040EZ. In those years, it wouldn't have been possible to instruct the taxpayer to reference a specific line since the total tax was in a different place on each form.
Now that we don't have that variation, I suspect they have just not updated the form to adjust for that. Of course, this is just pure conjecture on my part!
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