In the handful of years, we have owed more and more on our federal taxes, which I get to an extent. What is weird is we have a few different friends with similar family situations as us - married filing jointly, the same # of kids (around the same ages), similar salaries, similar mortgage setup, taking the standard deduction, and nothing crazy added for investments or retirements, etc. So the confusion I have is they are getting refunds, even if small. Even last year one family took the child tax payment monthly that was offered, so their child tax credit was reduced - they still got a refund. We did NOT take those payments (opted out) and we owed even having the full credit available to us. We haven't gotten a refund since 2016. I am not sure if I'm answering something incorrectly or overlooking something we might be eligible for. I've been doing TurboTax since the late 90's and it's always been so easy, but ever since 2017 I've felt like something was weird with our returns - assuming user error. I know we don't get to itemize with the higher standard deduction, but most people don't. Anyway, thoughts on obvious things that I should look at? I'm a smart person with boring taxes. So I can see with boring taxes maybe I'm skipping over something we are eligible for but I'm overlooking in the guided questions that I answer.
