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Level 2

Solved

How do I report this Charitable Contributions BUG???

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 22, 2022
6 replies
0 views

When using TurboTax Deluxe for 2021 there is a strange bug associated with the Review tab. After completing both my Federal and State tax returns, including the individual reviews with each of those returns (with No Errors!) and then continuing on to the Review tab (using the step-by-step method), the refund amount decreases with no explanation whatsoever. By opening the forms view, the issue became obvious... on a tax return for a couple filing jointly, when a standard deduction is beings used in conjunction with the charitable deduction ($300 per filer, $600 total), the tax return enters the proper $600 deduction (which shows with no error). That is mysteriously changed to $300 in the Review tab's 2nd step. The results are that the refund is decreased and the $300 (which was $600) in the forms view now shows up as an error (invalid amount entered in the field).

How in the world am I supposed to report this bug? And... if it goes unreported, how in the world are the developers supposed to fix the bug???

Best answer by JotikaT2

You can correct this by logging back into your TurboTax program and following the steps below.

Click on the Federal Taxes tab.
Select the Deductions & Credits tab.
On the screen titled How do you want to enter your deductions and credits?, select I'll choose what I work on.
Scroll down to Charitable Donations.
Select Update to the right of Donations to Charity in 2021.
You will see a screen titled Review All Your Charities.
To the right of any deductions entered, select Delete to remove any input.
You will then select Done with Charitable Donations.
On the next page (Deductions), scroll down to the bottom and click on Done with Deductions.
Proceed through the following screens until you pass the screen letting you know you are getting the Standard Deduction.
The next screen titled Charitable Cash Contributions under the Care Act will allow you to enter your charitable contributions for 2021. Enter your total cash contributions on this screen and select Continue.

Charitable Cash Contributions

This will correct the issue and allow you to continue with your tax return.

JotikaT2

Answer

Employee Tax Expert

You can correct this by logging back into your TurboTax program and following the steps below.

Click on the Federal Taxes tab.
Select the Deductions & Credits tab.
On the screen titled How do you want to enter your deductions and credits?, select I'll choose what I work on.
Scroll down to Charitable Donations.
Select Update to the right of Donations to Charity in 2021.
You will see a screen titled Review All Your Charities.
To the right of any deductions entered, select Delete to remove any input.
You will then select Done with Charitable Donations.
On the next page (Deductions), scroll down to the bottom and click on Done with Deductions.
Proceed through the following screens until you pass the screen letting you know you are getting the Standard Deduction.
The next screen titled Charitable Cash Contributions under the Care Act will allow you to enter your charitable contributions for 2021. Enter your total cash contributions on this screen and select Continue.

Charitable Cash Contributions

This will correct the issue and allow you to continue with your tax return.

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mrsdawnedavis

Level 2

JotikaT2 - Thank you so much! I was online with TurboTax for almost 90 minutes yesterday trying to figure this out. They had no fix, and I had no way to file my taxes. I was livid to discover this same issue existed last year for 2020 taxes, and TurboTax hasn't fixed the problem and hasn't trained their employees on the fix. You are the bomb--thanks so much for sharing your knowledge with us!

MMcCants

Level 3

Why do you claim this blunder is "solved" when TT continues to flag the $600 as an error even today?

Jason707

Level 5

Did this get fixed? I am running into the SAME exact issue. Also we are using standard deduction married filing jointly, refund amount goes down and shows $300 on 12b. It should read $600 for us?

Jason707

Level 5

"7.To the right of any deductions entered, select Delete to remove any input."

When I get to this step, are you saying to delete one of my charitable donations I've entered in? I have a few entered in, not sure I should delete one?

Jason707

Level 5

"11. The next screen titled Charitable Cash Contributions under the Care Act will allow you to enter your charitable contributions for 2021. Enter your total cash contributions on this screen and select Continue."

For step #11, I don't get this screen popping up.

RussHamptonAuthor

Level 2

For those of you that asked how I got around this bug in TurboTax Deluxe on Windows 10... When I did the Review under the Review tab (after having already reviewed, individually, both the Federal and State returns), I noticed that my Federal refund had mysteriously decreased. I opened the Forms View and saw that the 1040/1040SR Wks form was flagged as not complete and had line 12b flagged with an error (has an unacceptable value... the $600 had been decreased to $300... which was deemed to be unacceptable in that form). I changed the $300 on line 12b in the worksheet back to $600 and the form deemed that to "be acceptable." After that, I tried the review tab again... with the same results. So, I again changed the $300 back to $600 and then skipped over the Review tab (note that the individual Federal & State reviews still deemed the returns to be error free) and went straight to the File tab in the Step-by-Step view.

Note that in my case the deductions would have carried over to the state return, since I didn't delete them... but it was immaterial as I am retired and PA doesn't tax retirement income anyway.

I believe that some of the "confusion" on the TurboTax developers part stems from inconsistent information being supplied by the IRS (and most likely, different developers working on the different parts of TurboTax). The latest version of Publication 526 (Charitable Deductions), which is labeled for the tax year 2020, indicates that the maximum amount of the "Cash contributions for individuals who do not itemize deductions" for "married filing jointly" is $300. However, the IRS Topic No. 506 clearly states that the amount is $600 for married individuals filing joint returns. See https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc506

I hope this helps those of you that need to leave your deductions in TurboTax because they are necessary for your state returns. Good luck!

And, my final complaint... it's simply unconscionable that TurboTax doesn't provide a "bug reporting" method. And... it's also a very bad business practice that will probably result in a loss of customers due to persistent unaddressed bugs in their production.

TopMen

Level 2

Yes, you are correct. I am married filing jointly and taking the standard deduction.

I import the charitable donations from Its deductible online.

It does not give you the $600 deduction for 2021

You can delete all of your entries imported from Its deductible and manually correct it to $600 for the federal return.

However, when you delete all of the charitable contributions that you imported from Its deductible, you state return, in my case Wisconsin, thinks had no charitable contributions. So, my itemized deduction credit is too small.

Then, I re-import all of the donations that I tracked inside Its deductible. That fixes the Itemized deduction credit on the Wisconsin return. Then the software changes the federal amount back to $300 from $600, I think after he error check. It's an endless loop that you can only exit with the correct data if you don't repeat the error checking. It is simply incorrect and an obvious bug in the software that will affect many people if it's not corrected. I would assume many other states would give some kind of credit or deduction for charitable contributions.

They need to fix this quickly because it does affect a lot of people. It is not an obscure deduction.

Everyone should be closely checking for the $300 or $600 charity deduction on their federal return and verify that their respective state return is also accounting for it properly.

Double-check your returns, federal and state!

mdrdsr

Level 3

I have a similar yet reversed issue? it is beneficial for me to itemize, even though the recommendation is to use standard deduction. Itemizing gives me a much higher state refund (Maryland). But everytime I review Federal, it populates $600 into line 12b. I remove it, on the error screen, and it is good to go. I even printed out the forms to check. And, it appears to then flow the correct itemization to the Maryland state forms. The issue really is that everytime I do a "recheck", TT repopulates with $600. This is his is clearly a bug. If the user states they want to ITEMIZE, regardless of the TT recommendation, they should blank out 12b. So frustrating.

jonk1969

Level 2

Ran into the exact same bug when I went to file. TT didn't automatically select the filing jointly amount of $600, just said the $300 amount was "unacceptable" - took a few moments to figure out what the problem was.

SRei

Level 2

I need to do the same thing . There is a bug with the software as it related to charitable deduction. I have called TT 5 times. Wasted hours . They even refuse to accept there is a problem with the software!

DaveF1006

Level 15

To clarify, can you describe your issue you are experiencing?

@SRei

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Kennepede

Level 2

The problem has been described in this forum and confirmed by many users weeks ago. The issue has been resolved. The concern I have, and I imagine others may have, is that there seems to be no way of opening bug reports. As such, users are in the dark as to whether the issue is being worked on. For known bugs, it would save users a lot of time by communicating to them en masse what the bug is and what the workaround is. Instead the onus is placed on the users to search forums for issues. For such a critical application like this, the user experience is lacking--again placing the onus on many users to discover the same bug instead of actively communicating out to users. That is the sort of support that makes me consider an alternative application. By the way, I am not using the free online version, either. Thank you.