My return is married, filing jointly, with itemized deductions. AGI (Line 11) is $204,834, Itemized deductions (12a) is $26,450, with zero charitable donations. I originally had over $6,000 entered in charitable donations, but when I ran the review, I got the following error message: "1040/1040SR wks: charitable contributions: charitable contributions has unacceptable value." Charitable Contribution field had "300" in it.
I looked at the 1040/140Sr work sheet. Section 12 had our itemized deductions #, and 300 on line 12b- the number if I was taking a single standard deduction, Also, Box at top of Page 2, titled "Standard Deduction" has a box checked for "Spouse born before January 2, 1957". This is true, but I don't understand how this has any bearing on charitable contributions, since we are itemizing deductions, and have more than the standard deduction.
I called the TT help line. Agent had me delete ALL my itemized charitable contributions, AND zero out the standard deduction amount. I didn't really understand her explanation why this needed to be done. Our return then passed review, but my refund was reduced by about $400 because of not having any charitable contributions.
Something doesn't seem right here. I thought I had plenty of room under my AGI for $6,000 of charitable contributions, along with the other deductions. It seems like there is glitch in the software, given that the "Spouse Standard Deduction" box is checked, so the return is confused regarding my deduction selection- itemized versus standard.
Can someone help or clarify?
