The foreign tax credit is a complicated matter in the way it is determined. Here is a brief synopsis on how it is applied.
Your foreign tax credit cannot be more than your total U.S. tax liability multiplied by a fraction. The numerator of the fraction is your taxable income from sources outside the United States. The denominator is your total taxable income from U.S. and foreign sources. You don't need to make this determination because Turbo Tax does this for you.
This means you take the total tax liability on line 24 and multiply it by your total foreign income/total income from US and Foreign sources. Usually what happens is that the Foreign Tax Credit is much smaller than what you paid to the foreign country. The remainder is carried over as a foreign tax carryover that can be carried over indefinitely. It sounds like you have more foreign taxes accumulated than what can be applied in a given tax year.
As far as I know, there is no safe harbor convention that applies to this.
@gb_1435
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