I qualify for the foreign earned income exclusion, but my tax due still includes my foreign income (remains the same as long as i enter the income). why is that?

[pk]

Assuming that you are US citizen/resident ( Green Card ) and that you have been abroad for all of 2018 at least ( thereby you qualify for Physical presence test  and make you eligible for foreign Earned Income Exclusion ),  where and how are you being paid --- is it all in the USA  ( and therefore withholding fully ) or all abroad ( and therefore no W-2) or some here and some there ( i.e. W-2 does not capture your world income ?  Are you employed by a local entity?  Which country?

Generally when you enter your foreign income  ( personal income --> I will choose what I work on --> Other /special situations-->  Foreign Earned income and Exclusion ) then  TurboTax should open the form 2555 and walk you through this to qualify you for the exclusion. Thereafter  the excluded amount should appear as a negative number on schedule 1 line 21   and thus your taxable income goes down. 

Is this not what you are seeing ?

[magie_new]

it did have that negative number on schedule 1, but the total tax calculated was still using the amount before taking it off. It seems to be a bug in turbotax that i can't fix.

[pk]

It should  compute the tax on the total world income  and then exclude from this the tax due to the excluded amount. Thus the unexcluded  amount is taxed at your marginal rate without regard to the excluded amount.  So your final tax should show the effects of the exclusion.  Does that make sense ?