Minnesota: charitable contributions with standard deduction disappears after entering — software bug?

[currentform]

I am filing Minnesota state taxes using TurboTax Home and Business for Mac.

On the screen titled "Tell us about other income adjustments" there is a checkbox next to "Had charitable contributions and took standard deduction on federal return." When I click the checkbox it expands to show a and input box where I can type in the total dollar value, but when I type it and then remove focus from that field the number just disappears. This input should populate the "Charitable Contributions Over $500 Smart Worksheet" on Form M1M, and if I try to enter it there directly it also just immediately disappears.

The Charitable Contribution Subtraction page on the Minnesota Department of Revenue webpage says that I qualify to deduct charitable contributions (even if I choose the standard deduction) as long as these two things are true:

• I did not file a Schedule M1SA, Minnesota Itemized Deductions
• I made qualified deductions over $500.

Both of these should be true, as I am not itemizing deductions on federal and Turbotax validates that I am taking the standard deduction for Minnesota as well. However, it seems that Turbotax has created and populated Schedule M1SA, I assume so that it can advise on whether or not I should take the itemized or standard deduction for Minnesota. Turbotax actually populates my charitable contributions (entered on the federal side) into Schedule M1SA, but does not include them on Schedule M1M where I need them to be.

Is this a bug? Is Turbotax not letting me enter the charitable donation value into Schedule M1M because I have a Schedule M1SA, even though I don't plan to file it since I'm claiming the standard deduction? How can I get it to save/accept the input into "Had charitable contributions and took standard deduction on federal return" question in the walkthrough or let me edit/save Schedule M1M directly? I tried clearing my MN tax data and starting over, but that did not resolve the problem.

[currentform · Accepted solution]

Okay, I solved my own problem. Sharing here in case someone else has the same issue.

This does appear to be a bug in TurboTax, but not the way that I thought. What is happening is that MN has a standard deduction limitation, which means that if your income is over a certain threshold the standard deduction is reduced. TurboTax was doing this calculation for me, and because of that reduction it turns out that my itemized deduction total is slightly higher than the limited standard deduction (by just a few dollars). This means that I am filing Schedule M1SA and thus I can't / don't need to add charitable contributions on Schedule M1M. I confirmed that if I remove some of the charitable contributions, so that itemized total is below the limited standard deduction, that it flows the charitable contributions into Schedule M1M as expected.

So there are two things that led to my confusion.

1. The fact that the number for charitable contributions when taking the standard deduction just disappears instead of providing an explanation for why it can't be entered — that's a bad design choice.
2. There is a bug where the TurboTax tells me that I'm taking the standard deduction, even though it's calculated that the itemized deduction would be preferable and the actual forms show that I'm taking the itemized deduction. It appears to me that TurboTax is smart enough calculate the MN standard deduction limitation amount behind the scenes, but not smart enough to use that figure on the screen where it tells me whether I'm taking the standard or itemized deduction.