TurboTax can do an expert review if you sign up for TurboTax Live. They will review everything line-by-line to ensure it is entered accurately. They will require you to upload all your tax documents to conduct an expert review.
Generally speaking, since it does not seem the nature of your income has changed much and you are only looking at the tax due before the tax you paid, you may want to look at the credits as @AnnetteB6 mentioned. You said you missed out on the education credit this year, which can be up to $2,500 by itself. Did you also lose the other dependent credit for a child who was going to school but has graduated? That could be another $500. Did you receive any stimulus money on your 2020 return because the IRS missed you when they distributed the payments during the year? Schedule 3 has a lot of credits and Schedule 2 has a lot of additional taxes that you may have gotten one year but not the other.
If you have not already taken a look at this year's Form 1040, looking at that and comparing it line by line with 2020's is the best way to find the differences from one year to the next. If you have not yet paid for TurboTax, you may preview your Form 1040 and the accompanying schedules:
- Open or continue your return.
- Select Tax Tools in the left menu (if you don't see this, select the menu icon in the upper-left corner).
- With the Tax Tools menu open, you can then view your 1040 form: Select Tools. Next, select View Tax Summary in the pop-up, then Preview my 1040 in the left menu
