I just discovered that I understated my foreign dividend investment in 2022: I actually reported my foreign tax paid instead of my foreign income earned. Stupid, right? TurboTax did not catch this in its verification of the return (I guess it is not a common-enough error for them to bother with?) I thought it not worth the hassle because the IRS seemingly would owe me a couple of hundred dollars (I ran a simulation). But now it's occurring to me that this will affect my 2023 return in the form of the foreign tax credit carry-over. (By the way, I only claim the deduction and don't itemize.) Is it worth filing the amended 2022 return? There won't be any result obtained from the IRS in time for 2023 filing (I see that it takes several months for them do process amended returns.) Should I file it now, and then file an amended 2023 return when the IRS results are known? Apparently the IRS will do the necessary calculations, all I'm responsible for is signalling the correct foreign dividend income figure.
You should do the amended 2022 return to use the correct amount on your 2023 return. You don't want to file 2023 incorrectly and have to fix it as well. The 2023 can be filed when correct and then you can file the 2022 whenever.
Very clearly explained. So that means that the IRS will wait up until the end of the three-years-from-filing deadline as justification for the adjustment that I make to my 2023 filing, and this will not affect their acceptance of the 2023 return?
I believe you are asking if the processing of the 2023 return will be adversely affected by not having the amended return from 2022 already processed. No one can know that for sure but if you file an accurate return for 2023 and amend the 2022 return in a timely fashion that is all that is expected of you. If that creates an issue, you will just need to explain what happened and that should resolve the issue. For practical purposes, it would normally take some time for the amended return to be processed and matched up with your 2023 return as far as carry overs are concerned, so as long as you make your filings and corrections in a timely fashion you should not have much to worry about.