Itemized vs Standard Deduction and it's effect on your State Income Tax. BEWARE EVERYONE!!!

[seaninegypt]

This is the first year that Turbo Tax has selected the standard deduction over the itemized deduction and indeed it saves me about $200 in Federal Tax.  Unfortunately Turbo Tax is not smart enough to take into account the effects on your state taxes.  For my specific situation, TT saves me $200 on Federal tax but costs me $1700 in State Taxes.  I had to try to figure out what happened myself and go into forms to change it back to itemized.  Turbo Tax continued to chastise me for selecting itemized over standard but I got my $1700 dollars back from State. 

I find this completely  unacceptable.  Please fix your software to analyze both Federal and State Tax savings before recommending itemized vs standard deduction.  You are costing people thousands of dollars.  Very huge and costly bug (for the people who bought your product) in my opinion.  

[Brivandal]

I am running into something similar. Due to change in job we made about $20,000 less in 2020. Using standard deduction fed return was actually $275 but I had to pay state MORE than last year. Does not make sense to me that fed went way down but state went up. How do I correct this? Thanks for any help you can give. 

[seaninegypt]

Exactly, check and see if Itemized gets your state back up more than in lowers your Federal.  I went Personal (tab after business) then I went to Deductions & Credits.  From there scroll down to the bottom and select Done with Deductions.  Select continue after it analyses ant then it will show you the page where it picks your deduction style.  Select Forms in the top right side of Turbo Tax.  When you see the form, scroll down just a hair to Part VI - Additional information for your Federal Return.  The first section allows you to click the box to itemize.  Your numbers at the top will change to reflect your choice and you can toggle back and forth to see if it's worth it.  Let me know how it goes...I was astounded that Turbo Tax didn't analyze both Fed and State to get your best overall return.