Line 22 says "Is any amount on line 12 or 13 from your sole proprietorship or partnership?" Did you mean line 23?
"This increases the final amount in line 9a / 11 by about $700 for me." What I think is happening is that the $5,000 is causing more of your actual spending to be shifted away from being matched to FSA spending to being shifted to spending that increases your Dependent Care credit.
This is a classic case of Unintended Consequences. Congress upped the amount that you could contribute to your FSA (which sounded good), but then sharply increased the amount of credit you could get. A number of taxpayers have found that the credit brings them MORE benefit than the salary exclusion that the FSA contributions represent. This was usually not the case before (although it was sometimes, which is why taxpayers were advised at the start of the year to run a test return with the exclusion and with the credit to see which way was better).
Since, on the surface, it appears that the number that should be used is $5,000, I think you should go ahead and file that, even though it's to your benefit.
The instructions for line 21 state (as I am sure you have read): "Your employer can tell you whether your dependent care plan was amended to increase the amount that can be excluded." If your employer told you that they did NOT amend their plan, then "For 2021, the ARP permits employers to increase to $10,500 (previously $5,000) the maximum amount that can be excluded from an employee's income through a dependent care assistance program." So the limit must still be $5,000, so far as you know. It would be even better if you had something in writing from your employer that they did not amend the plan. Stick that in your tax file.
And since the instructions for line 21 clearly state: "Don't enter more than the maximum amount allowed under your dependent care plan.", you have done just that.
It's not your fault that you are benefiting from an unintended consequence of the American Rescue Plan, that the less expense you allocate to the FSA offset means more expense for the credit which happens to be better for you anyway.
Save all this documentation in your tax file, in case anyone comes to ask. The really important thing in an audit is not to be seen as committing fraud, but here you have ample documentation that you are following the literal instructions of the FSA rules and the 2441, as confused as the situation has turned out o be.
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