The child tax credit for a 2 year old is $3600. If you received the monthly advance payments between July and December then you should have already received $1800, with an additional $1800 to be refunded on your 2021 tax return. You say you only got $500? Did you enter something incorrectly and only get the $500 credit for other dependents?
And why do you think your standard deduction was higher last year? Did your filing status change? If your filing status did not change from last year, then your standard deduction is actually higher for 2021. It goes up every year.
Have you entered all of your income and information correctly? Better go back through the screens in My Info and see how you answered the questions about your child.
Make sure you have entered your child as a dependent in My Info, and that you have entered the child's Social Security number. If your child was born in 2021make sure you said he lived with you the whole year. There is an oddly worded question that asks if the child paid over half their own support. Say NO to that question.
Did you receive monthly child tax credit payments during the last half of 2021?
Federal>Deductions and Credits>You and Your Family>Child Tax Credit
The IRS is sending out letter 6419 to you. It will show the amount of advance child tax credit that you received during 2021. Enter the information from that letter carefully. The remaining amount of CTC that you can receive will show up on line 28 of your 2021 Form 1040.
PREVIEW 1040
https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/1901539-how-do-i-preview-my-turbotax-online-return-before-filing
Click on Tax Tools on the left side of the screen. Click on Tools. Click on View Tax Summary. Click on Preview my 1040 on the left side of the screen.
NOTE: The CTC is indeed a “credit” that can be applied toward any tax liability that you would otherwise have to pay as “tax due” to the IRS.
And…..Ignore that “refund monitor.” The software STARTS OFF by giving you the full amount of CTC. When you enter the amounts from your letter, the software reconciles the amount you received with the amount you can still get IF you are eligible to get the other half. You are NOT losing any of the credit; you are not being taxed on the credit. Don’t get confused by the reconciled amount. You got some of it already—-now you get the rest.
If you received the advance payment and are NOT eligible to get the other half, then it will not show up on line 28. (Such as in some cases where the wrong parent got the advance payments, etc.)
That “refund monitor” should not be taken seriously until every last morsel of your data has been entered.
And.... you need to print out your 2021 return and put it side by side with a copy of your 2020 return to see what is different.
**Disclaimer: Every effort has been made to offer the most correct information possible. The poster disclaims any legal responsibility for the accuracy of the information that is contained in this post.**
