Thanks Kat. Unfortunately, I can't screen shot .... but here's the issue I uncovered. I think I diagnosed it, so it should hopefully be easy to investigate and fix.
I am using Turbotax online. I used it last year as well. Last year, I received a State Refund from North Carolina. Let's say it was $1,500.
I entered all my data for my Federal return for 2020. I was expecting a Refund of a certain amount. Let's say $2,500. As soon as I began the NC Return, my Federal Refund amount dropped by several hundred dollars to $2,100.
I cleared out all the data, started over, and the same thing happened. After a lot of investigation, I discovered that by simply starting the NC return, it was adding the State Refund from 2019 AGAIN as income to the Federal return, thus double counting it. So, instead of $1,500, it was now showing $3,000. As a result, everything else around it changed, dropping the overall refund for 2020.
Luckily I was able to change it back to the $1,500 and fix the problem on the Federal return, as long as I kept the data I already had in the NC State return.
