I was never trying to claim the $300/600 deduction, and never entered it.
As an experiment, I put $650 of itemized cash charitable contributions back in my return, and ran the review. I got the following error message: "1040/1040SR Wks: Charitable contributions: Charitable contributions must be entered." followed by a blank field. If I enter $650, I get another box that says the number must be $300 or 600. When I look at the forms, 650 appears in Line 12a of the 1040/1040Sr worksheet (which I think is correct), but there is a red "zero" in 12b- as if it is looking for 300 or 600.
Again, I think something is corrupted in the basic personal information of my return. The "Standard Deduction" box above still has a box checked for my wife being born before January 2, 1957. Unless I can get rid of that, I don't think I can itemize my charitables.
I am giving serious consideration to starting a new return from scratch....
