Should the federal total of capital gains be the same on both state and federal? While doing state, TT shows capital gains almost double what I entered for federal.

[cruella2711]

I'm working on my state return. It is asking me about capital gains from US obligations. The screen shows the Federal Total of capital gains and asks how much is from US obligations. But, the federal total shown is more than double what is shown on my 1099-B. Why?

[GeorgeM777]

The capital gains and capital losses from your 1099-B should be consistent with the amounts on your federal return.  If not, you need to adjust them so that they are consistent.  One reason why you may be asked about gains from US obligations is that state governments cannot generally tax the federal government and vice versa.  Thus, to the extent you have gains from US obligations (namely US government debt securities) then such gains may not be taxable by your state.  

It is not clear why your federal total gain should be greater than what is on your 1099-B.  Have you determined that all of the capital gains from your 1099-B are reflected on your federal return?  It could be that some of the entries in the investment section of TurboTax are greater than what they should be.  Check for any whose value looks too large and compare that transaction with your 1099-B.  To the extent you find discrepancies, make the appropriate adjustment in TurboTax.  

@cruella2711

[cruella2711]

I finally found the answer in another post. The display title on the screen was "capital gains" which I was trying to match to the "capital gains" portion of the 1099. It turns out that TurboTax really meant "capital gains plus dividends" equals the number shown. When I added the capital gains and dividends together from my 1099, that matched what TurboTax was showing when asking about how much of the amount was US obligations. I wish the language was clearer because I kept deleting and re-entering all my investment information thinking there must be a duplicate entry. I even cleared all my data and restarted my return from scratch (federal and state) but no matter what I did, the amounts were seemingly off.  Had I known that "capital gains" also includes dividends, I would not have wasted so much time re-entering data.