I seem to be carrying on a conversation with myself here. Don't know if the question is too dumb of too complicated.
BUT the more I look into the problem, I am getting a sense that Turbotax does really know what they are doing - although it really makes no sense to me. Now that Turbotax has fixed (don't know what was going on there) my Deductions and Credits screen (which was for informational purposes only) - and re-reading the "Taxes You Paid" section of Schedule A - which says:
"State and local income taxes or general sales taxes. You may include either . . . ., but not both. . . . ."
I note that it doesn't say "taxes you owe" and now I am thinking that it means "taxes you paid" (which is the Heading on this section of Schedule A). So now I am OK with seeing my Estimated Taxes paid here - even though it could be way high as in my case because I made an error in calculating my Capital Gains tax on some farmland that I sold.
That said, I now have another question - which is, Why income tax "OR" general sales tax. There is a big difference here - many thousands of dollars for state income tax vs. hundreds of dollars for general sales taxes - one boosting you into a Schedule A submission and the other not.
It would seem that if you can get a bigger deduction using a Schedule A deduction, that is the way to go - and it seems the Turbotax is thinking along the same line because it is choosing a Schedule A for me. HOWEVER, it also appears that my Charitable deductions can also flow to my 1040, but are limited to $300, which makes this an easy decision on which way to go, depending on the size of your charitable contributions. And of course, there is also that limit on Taxes You Paid of $10,000, which kind of turns out to be the big decision-maker on Schedule A or no Schedule A.
OK, this is hurting my brain. I think I will once again place most of my trust in Turbotax, which I have been doing for the last 15 or 20 years - and go with the philosophy of, if you can get a Schedule A bottom line that is greater than the $14,000 Standard Deductions, take it. This simplifies things a lot.
ron in shawnee
