Turbo tax adds my pre-tax child care FSA payroll deduction ($2500 for 2018) to my wages on the 1040 line 1. My wife and I both have earned income. My wife's earned income (schedule C line 1 is positive) has expenses that offset it so she shows $0 for net profit for her independent consulting business (schedule C line 31). I believe as a result turbotax does not even ask us to input our child care expenses and automatically adds the FSA payroll deduction to my wages. Form 2441 line 16 is 0 (no child care expenses). Form 2441 line 19 is also 0. When I look at the instructions for form 2441, the IRS clearly states that I should be using my wife's earned income from schedule C line 1 here and not from schedule C line 31. I believe this is a bug in turbo tax. The only way it seems I can fix this is to manually override the numbers on form 2441 to include a positive number on line 16 and 19. Am I correct?
