topic How to amend prior year return for an Excess Foreign Tax Credit Carryback? in Deductions & credits

How to amend prior year return for an Excess Foreign Tax Credit Carryback?

steiny1227 — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 12:12:14 GMT

I have an excess foreign tax credit to apply to 2021 taxes, and I am trying to TurboTax's instructions, but the screens they are suggesting never come up. I can amend the prior year's return, but on the screen where it asks what form needs to be amended, Form 1116 is not there, so when I specific that it simply takes me to the main screen where I can see all my Wages & Deductions. The problem is when you try to re-visit the Foreign Tax Credit deduction it never allows me to update the value, it simply keeps stating that the credit I received last year is already in my taxes. There is no way to add an additional credit and no way to update the existing. TurboTax always seems to over complicate things.

And don't get me started on the TT call-back feature. The first time it hung up on me, the 2nd time it seemed I was connected to someone because I literally heard them close a door, but nobody ever spoke. What a joke! This TT community feature is the only thing that saves me year to year.

Re: How to amend prior year return for an Excess Foreign Tax Credit Carryback?

pk — Sat, 18 Feb 2023 20:54:03 GMT

@steiny1227 while I am not familiar with the screens of TurboTax online, my understanding is that this is pretty similar to download version ( I have Home & Business version and it is up to date ), And therefore I venture to ask you for details of the situation -- what I get from your posy is that

(a) you are a US person ( citizen / GreenCard / Resident for tax purposes )

(b) you had some foreign tax credit in the year 2021 which you reported

(c) in 2022 you have also some unallowed foreign tax credit ( limited by form 1116 ) and therefore want to amend return for 2021 to use up some of this 2022 unallowed foreign tax credit.

Please confirm that this is the gist of what you are trying to achieve. Can you please tell me more about the following : 1. is your 2021 foreign tax credit form 1116 already limited i.e. you had carry over from earlier and/or you had unallowed due to 2021; 2. what is the source of your foreign source income ( wages / self-employed / passive or what ); 3. which country; 4. is HTKO involved ?

Please respond and either I will help or ( if beyond my ken ) page another user

Re: How to amend prior year return for an Excess Foreign Tax Credit Carryback?

steiny1227 — Sun, 19 Feb 2023 04:30:33 GMT

Yes, all that is correct. To answer your questions:

1) I am not aware of any limitations, no carry over from previous years or limits

2) Passive (dividends)

3) Various - but majority is from Israel

4) What is HTKO?

I figured out how to get to the screen that asks if I have a carryover from 2022, but when I enter the $1,600 it immediately takes away the ~$500 credit I already have from 2021, which makes no sense. I would have expected either no change if I had hit some limit or TT to accept both credits. The other confusing part is when doing my 2022 taxes on the final foreign tax credit screen that says I have a carryover it says it is ~$800 for a normal/non-Alternative minimum tax return and the $1,600 for an AMT tax return so does that mean I’m triggering AMT or not? It isn’t clear which carryover amount I should be using and I can’t find a screen anywhere that says whether we are paying AMT until after I file and can see the PDF return.

Thanks for your help! I always seem to have one thing each year that is a pain in the butt on this platform!