I understand your frustration - I am in the same boat as you. FYI, I added option 2b) just now (variation of 2(a)) to my previous post above. Just to note, "Form 1116" has been around for a while and TurboTax has supported it soon enough. However, the "Form 1116, Schedule B" was only introduced by IRS late into 2021. So, TT simply has had not enough time to catch up, implement the form logic, test it thoroughly, before introducing it to millions of its customers safely (I am a professional software engineer so I can understand the complexity involved). Foreign taxes is one of the most complex parts of the tax code, so implementation is not very quick. I am not defending TT, just pointing out that this is a sad consequence of changes introduced by IRS too late in the year. Also, even IRS cannot be blamed, given the tax laws are passed by congress. Even congressmen cannot be blamed caused most of the work is done by their staff/lobbyists. Given what I know/experienced, moving forward, I will avoid keeping foreign mutual funds and individual stocks & bonds in a taxable brokerage account (perhaps only restricting them to my 401K, IRA and other retirement funds). The complex forms and the carryover tracking & anxiety is simply not worth it. Even if this is supported really well by TT and you/TT diligent track your carryovers, not all of your carryovers may be applied to subsequent years given there is a max limit of FTC you can take in a year (dependent on your foreign income of that year, US income of that year, whether you owe taxes, and the total taxes owed), which means the strong potential of getting double-taxed on part of your foreign income despite your/TT's best efforts. The approach of investing in foreign stock/bonds is only worth it if and only if you think that foreign stock will do way better than equivalent US stocks to justify the potential double-taxation, carryover anxiety and tax filing tribulations. And I am willing to take a bet that nobody who cannot see into the future can predict that.
