Deductions & credits

I ran across this same (or similar) problem today.  It started at the "Checking your return..." step for my Federal return.  It took me to an error on some behind-the-scenes worksheet for Form 1040 line 10b for "Charitable contributions if you take the standard deduction".  The was blank and it was saying that's not allowed.  I tried entering $0 and it said that wasn't allowed.  Then I tried entering the total of my charitable contributions and it said that was out of the allowable range.  So then I googled a bit about this and realized I should try $300 given that I legitimately had over $300 in charitable contributions and that's the limit of what can be deducted for 2020 if you choose the standard deduction.  That worked - or at least it solved that problem, but then created another.  Next I got stuck on the final "Deductions & Credits" screen where you pick either the Standard Deduction or Itemized Deductions.  In my case my Itemized Deductions were just a bit, about $150, above the Standard Deduction amount and TurboTax was naturally recommending the Itemized Deductions and showing that if I picked that then my refund would go up by another $29 bucks.  So I picked it but my refund didn't actually go up...  So I went a little further along in the process and previewed my return and it showed me taking the Standard Deduction, this despite the fact that TurboTax had recommended the Itemized Deduction and that is what I'd selected.  So skip forward - eventually I ended up on the phone with an advisor (Anthony) and worked with him on the phone for next 1 hour and 29 minutes...  He pretty quickly saw what I saw and tried most of the same things to get TurboTax to use the Itemized Deduction that I had tried.  He even pulled his lead in.  They were unsuccessful though.  The ultimate remedy was to send me a free copy of the desktop version of TurboTax because they indicated they'd been able to get it working there, just not in TurboTax Online.  They recommended exporting from TurboTax Online and importing my data into the desktop version.  I was worried there might be a data corruption issue though so I went and re-entered everything from scratch.  At the very end of this saga I think I see where the problem is, at least for me and those like me whose Itemized Deductions are just a little bit over the Standardized Deduction.  In such a case it may look like the Itemized Deductions is the better option but in fact if you have at least $300 in charitable contributions then it is actually better if you take the Standardized Deduction in which case this new $300 deduction for 2020 on line 10b sweetens the deal.  So there seems to be a bug in the TurboTax online version where you can get into this state where it pins you to taking the Standardized deduction plus the $300 deduction (via the route I mentioned at the start) which is actually the right overall answer, but then later on the final "Deductions and Credits" screen it incorrectly makes it sound like you could save even a bit more if you switched to take the Itemized Deduction.  However, the truth is that if you did that you wouldn't be eligible for the extra $300 deduction on line 10b of the 1040 anymore.  I want to say thanks to Anthony - even though he wasn't able to quickly remedy my issue he did approach it very professionally - quickly realizing that I had run across a legitimate bug and he worked hard to find a workaround, even pulling in his lead.  That was a breath of fresh air - better than the typical first question of "is you computer on/off switch in the on position?"  🙂