I have encountered the same issue and agree with the original poster's analysis. It appears that the value of Federal 1041, page 2, line 11 is used instead of the DNI (line 7). Line 11 can include non-income distributions (such as principal) that are not part of Federal or CO income.
This is a general error for complex trusts, but also will affect simple trusts when a final return is done and assets are distributed.
A similar (not quite same) error existed in 2020 returns where the total distribution number was used instead of DNI, but that error did not exhibit as a calculation error in the return.
How can this programming error get fixed?
