@ramen dog This is my first year attempting to claim the credit. But I knew a long time ago that I would want to do it this year. So I started asking questions a long while ago last year to give myself and TurboTax lots of time to fix this. That's how long TurboTax has had to do something about this. You can see people complaining about this a year ago. Yet, apparently they did nothing, not even make it so we can at least do this in Forms mode and be certain it can e-file.
Unfortunately FreeTaxUSA does not support Form 8881 at all or I'd be using them too. This is not shocking since FreeTaxUSA is mostly for people with simpler tax situations and they do a great job for that. But for TurboTax, which is supposed to be able to handle sophisticated situations, it's really bad that they can't promise we can take this rather simple credit even in Forms mode and e-file.
I'm still holding out hope that @PatriciaV is wrong and we can just claim this credit in Forms mode and e-file. I thought people last year said they figured out how to make it work. But perhaps those people had startup costs too and for those who don't have startup costs, it won't work.
Since you're close to ready to try filing, I'm eager to hear what happens for you. Let us know all the details, especially if you are claiming Form 8881, Part II but have no startup costs, and if it goes through.
