Charitable donations with standard deduction

[DoninGA]

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@MMcCants wrote:

Whenever I sign out of the community, I get:

Error

Unexpected System Error

Sorry for the inconvenience. Please contact your administrator for assistance and provide the reference number below to help locate and correct the problem.

Reference#: 2118-4871

Hilarious and sad.

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Yep...We have been complaining about that message for the last two and half years, ever since this iteration of the TurboTax forum was brought online.  No luck in getting in removed.

[cautery]

Yeah, I thought of that too....  (first VITA year was 1987 in Panama Canal Zone).
But I am not going to create a potential "weasel out" situation where Intuit/TT says they cannot help if the Fed gives me a world of "excrement" over not having an "i" dotted or "t" crossed.

If it doesn't pass analysis, then it ain't getting sent in.  Having to KLUDGE it in any way is unacceptable.

Spent an HOUR on the phone with a paid TT contractor trying to educate her enough that she could understand and then escalate....  We were disconnected....  She has NOT called back.

I am LIVID!  I have many more returns to do/help on, and I don't have time for this penny ante male bovine excrement.

[artworksmetal]

So, to recap and clarify the procedure that I had to use, to get the correct charitable donation under the CARES act. For the online edition:

1. Upload your W-2s. Let TurboTax read the forms and put all the numbers in the right worksheets.
2. Let TurboTax walk you through your return while promising you 100% accuracy.
3. Have TurboTax suggest that the Standard Deduction is right for you. It will tell you not to worry about charitable deductions, which it will ask about later.
4. When it doesn't ask you about it later, hopefully you will notice that, and ignore the big thumbs up  TurboTax gives you when it tells you your federal return looks great.
5. Pay before filing so that you can print out your return and see that you have been given (in my case) a $240 charitable deduction.
6. Spend a couple of hours poking around the Internet and in the help screens within TurboTax until you finally stumble on this thread in the TurboTax community.
7. Try the solutions posted in this thread and discover that none of them work for you. All of them tell you to clear your cash donations from the " Donations to Charity" section. Then, according to the instructions, TurboTax will take you to the "Charitable Cash Contributions under Cares Act" screen. But your $240 donation is not in that section, so there is nothing to delete.
8. Scratch your head for another 30 minutes until you find the $240 deduction is on the W-2 form, so TurboTax adds it in but does not show it anywhere.
9. Search the help screens and forums again and discover that your situation is not mentioned anywhere.
10. Delete that item from your W-2 form and try not to feel dirty about deleting information on your legal document that is being sent to the IRS.
11. Now when you review your federal return, TurboTax does take you to the "Charitable Cash Contributions under Cares Act." Here you can enter the correct amount.
12. Report these findings to the community thread so that it might help other people with the same problem.
13. Notice that TurboTax employees moderating the forum are unable to admit that there are issues with the software. Also note that they continue to give the same workaround solution to the problem, without mentioning the special case of having charitable deductions on the W-2.
14. Suggest to the moderators that they would do a great service for many of their customers if they sent an email to everyone explaining and (dare I say) apologizing about the situation. That way other people don't have to waste several hours trying to get this right. Or worse, not get the full refund that they're entitled to.
15. Wait and see how they respond to that.

1.  

[MMcCants]

When TT flags the "error", simply change the 300 to 600 and DO NOT run error check again.

[cautery]

When TT flags the "error", simply change the 300 to 600 and DO NOT run error check again.

And serve Intuit a way to weasel out of their accuracy guarantee, and potentially cause me issues with the IRS?  Mmmmm....  No thank you!!  I'd rather beat my toes off with a hammer.

[marcus17]

That worked for me. I just e-filed

[cautery]

@marcus17 - Hope you don't get audited and need to fall back on the Intuit Accuracy guarantee....

'Cause sure as shootin', Intuit will run your return file through the software FIRST thing to see if it pops and error so they can say YOU sent in a file with an error in it.

Intuit WILL fix this error before I send in my tax return.  AND my file WILL include ALL of the charitable donations I made this year, EVEN IF I decide to take the Standard Deduction vs. the Itemized Route.... WHICH by the way does NOT work correctly EITHER!

[chuckmeister]

DaveF1006's solution worked for my desktop version.  Thanks!

[Keith44053]

I did the same.  You can change the value to the correct amount and proceed to filing without error as long as you don't run another Final review or error check.  Like you, I have been preparing taxes for many years and I have never seen the Final Review change a figure before.  The Final Review is there to highlight errors - not to make changes.  This is without a doubt a TurboTax programing error and should be fixed. 

[Keith44053]

You are offering a work-around to fix a TurboTax programming error. 

First - If you are an expert or even experienced with TT, you probably do not need to go through the Questions and Answers part of the program but instead simply use the forms to enter your data.  I have prepared tax this way for years without issue.  I should not now, as I have never in the past, been required to go to the Questions and Answers part and click 'done' to complete the return.

Secondly - TurboTax should not require that you delete or change anything on Schedule A to take the 'above the line' charitable contribution.  The program knows if the Itemized Deductions or the Standard Deductions are being used.

Third - when running a Final Review, the program will change a $600 entry to $300 regardless of the filing status and still highlight it as an error.  The program should not change the value simply highlight errors. 

[Keith44053]

You are offering a work-around to fix a TurboTax programming error. 

First - If you are an expert or even experienced with TT, you probably do not need to go through the Questions and Answers part of the program but instead simply use the forms to enter your data.  I have prepared tax this way for years without issue.  I should not now, as I have never in the past, been required to go to the Questions and Answers part and click 'done' to complete the return.

Secondly - TurboTax should not require that you delete or change anything on Schedule A to take the 'above the line' charitable contribution.  The program knows if the Itemized Deductions or the Standard Deductions are being used.

Third - when running a Final Review, the program will change a $600 entry to $300 regardless of the filing status and still highlight it as an error.  The program should not change the value simply highlight errors. 

[jj1645]

After 2 days of work, and today, a 2 hour phone call, going from person to person, 4 times, the conclusion is THERE IS A SYSTEM GLITCH. Ever person I repeated the issue with, and did the same things I had done all said they had not seen this.

Finishing the federal part of the return, showed OK. After finishing the state, ran review and got the charitable donation error. In the end, ever employee said everything entered was correct and were not sure why the error.

Turbo tax says not to file until you get a no errors screen in review. Finally we went forward to file, and looked at final forms and the correct information was there.

Employee admitted to a 'GLITCH".

So if you get the message, showing the error of charitable donation, continue on to file, and check the forms at  the end. Mine were correct, even with the error message.

What was worse no one seemed to care about the error.

[jj1645]

does not work

[jj1645]

does not work

[jj1645]

does not work