Itemizing for state return only

[tryon40]

My itemized deductions are $10K higher than the NY standard deduction for my filing status, but TurboTax Online is not offering me the option of itemizing for the state only. I've spent hours looking for a way to switch the NY return to itemized from the standard deduction without any success. Is there some way to fix this?

[BillM223 · Accepted solution]

I went through the New York interview and did not see such a question either. So I entered $35,000 in property taxes on the federal return. Because of the SALT limit, this was not enough to force Schedule A on the federal to be Itemized, but was plenty enough on NY State to be itemized.

Sure enough, the federal return remained with the Standard Deduction while NYS was itemized - and I did not even do anything in NYS.

So now I have to wonder if you are aware that New York State went back to the tax law that existed prior to the Jobs Cut and Tax Cut Act of 2017, where there was no SALT limit and other changes. Take at look at "2023 New York itemized deductions", and see if you entered enough stuff in Schedule A on the federal than when it carried down to NYS that it would have automatically triggered itemization, like it did on my test.

[tryon40]

Thanks so much for your reply. After spending a lot of time working directly with the NY instructions for their Form IT-196, I saw that NY has income limits for itemized deductions and that was the issue. Because you cannot see detailed worksheets in TurboTax, I now understand that TT was properly lowering the eligible amount of my deductions, but I did not know that since I could not see the worksheet. Thanks again for replying.