Deductions & credits

OK, a year later and the problems are still not fixed. I made two donations to a charitable donor advised fund, let's call it XYZ. Here's what TTax asked me. First, it asks for Date, no problem with that, it was 12/2/22. Then it asks me to select a category, one of which is "Securities, not stock." All good so far. On the next page you enter Description, Value and Method used for value. I entered 1 call option EOG Jan20'23$61.2, which fit exactly in the space, but wouldn't have if the stock symbol was 4 characters. A value of $6,350 and "average share price" was selected. On the next page, purchase price (1280), date acquired (7/20/21) and "purchase" were entered. Then I answered YES to the question about it being used for the charities purpose. I went through the same process for the other donation to donor advised fund, XYZ. But when it sows the summary of donations to XYZ, the "type" is listed as "Items you valued." NOT TRUE. These are PUBLICLY TRADED SECURITIES but they are not stock. But, BTW, if I select "Publicly traded stock" as the category, TTax still classifies these donations as "items you valued," as if they were antiques or something!

 

So here's another issue. When you're done with all the donations, it asks, "Were any of your donations to a fraternal order, veteran's group, nonprofit cemetery or other 30% charity. If I answer NO, TTax warns me that everything will be treated as having 100% AGI limit, but that is just not true because changing Yes to No doesn't change my tax due! Either way, the questions get really weird. It asks, "Describe your donated items over $5,000." It wants to know about the physical condition of my Call Options and even shares of stock! So for physical condition I put "publicly traded security." It then asks if these items need an appraisal! Of course not! All of this is because TTax changed the "donation type" from "publicly traded stock" or "securities, not stock" to "items you have valued." It then asks nonsensical questions about bargain sales and average trading price! I already told it that I used the average trading price to value the donation! 

 

In short, the crazy interview sequence of questions gives me no confidence that TTax will correctly generate my tax return. The donation types for publicly traded stock and securities, not stock are not being handled properly in the dialogue.