How do I fix "Charitable contribution has unacceptable value" issue?

[JamesG1]

If you are in TurboTax Online, the screen Charitable Cash Contributions under CARES Act appears as the end of Deductions & Credits. First you have to pass the screen Based on what you told us, the standard deduction is best for you at the end of Deductions & Credits.

But you have to qualify for the standard deduction before the screen appears.  So you may want to change the value of one or more itemized deductions to $1 so that you qualify for the standard deduction.

Follow these steps: 

• At the top of the screen, click on Deductions & Credits.
• Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Wrap up tax breaks.
• Continue through several screens.
• At the screen Based on what you told us, the standard deduction is best for you, click Continue.
• At the screen Any Charitable Cash Contributions? delete the dollar amount.
• Continue through Federal Review to make sure that things look correct.
• Then restore your itemized deductions dollar amounts.

[ksingams]

I am sorry but your recommendation does not work. I spent the entire morning on this issue after having tried all the recommendations listed in the TurboTax Community (all four pages of the previous discussions).

The only I seem to make TurboTax accept my inputs is by either

1. switching to Itemized deductions (results in my bill going up several hundreds of dollars) or

2. listing 0 in both 10.a and 10.b (doing this will negate the benefit of standard deduction for this entry and makes my tax bill go up by $100+).

It's so frustrating that if I could switch to TaxAct, I would but I have already paid my filing fees to TurboTax so I am stuck now. Please don't tell me to print my returns and ship them to the IRS, then paying TurboTax to eFile my returns seems pointless.

There has gotta be a fix or a simpler way, isn't there?

[RolandHTG]

This worked for me.  Hope it works for you.

I closed out of the program and went back to review my Deductions and selected Charitable deductions.

I use Turbo Tax to file both federal and state returns.  It looks like (as far as I can tell) it had seen that I gave $10 last year on my state return to one of the charities that NC allows you to donate part of your refund too.  Apparently it wanted me to enter $10.00 under Charity based on last years NC tax return data it had.  Once I did that, it accepted my federal return and let me file.  

Check last years Turbo Tax filing (if you used it last year).  See if you donated any portion of your state refund to any charitable groups,  If you did, try entering that number in there.