I entered $540 worth of tax deductible, qualifying charitable donations and it did NOTHING to me refund. Why is this ONLY true on TurboTax and no other tax service?

[DoninGA]

A charitable donation can only be entered as an itemized deduction on Schedule A.  The Total of all itemized deductions on Schedule A Must be greater than the Standard Deduction for your filing status to have any type of tax benefit on your tax return.

Standard deductions for 2019

• Single - $12,200 add $1,650 if age 65 or older
• Married Filing Separately - $12,200 add $1,300 if age 65 or older
• Married Filing Jointly - $24,400 add $1,300 for each spouse age 65 or older
• Head of Household - $18,350 add $1,650 if age 65 or older

[SteamTrain]

Now, If you DO have enough deductions, such that itemized deductions will be used, then the exact order of when & where you enter those deductions is also critical.  

Paying too much attention to the refund meter...before  you have entered sufficient deductions to have exceeded the Std Deduction limit could be your actual issue.....or perhaps you have not entered all your income and tax withholding $$ yet  (can't get a refund unless you've entered that withholding, or other tax payments already made for 2019).

[nathenhoard]

Last year, I entered $20 worth of charitable donations, without itemizing, and my refund went UP. This year, $540 did nothing. I’ll say that again, a $20 donation INCREASED my refund last year WITHOUT itemizing.

[Critter]

Don't know what you did last year however charitable deductions have ALWAYS been on the Sch A so if you do not have enough to itemize it will not make a difference.  Review the 2018 return and see what form/line that $20 showed up on. 

[SteamTrain]

Yeah, that behavior rom last year is interesting, but you may not really know when the software starts using itemized deductions.   IT determines that automatically in the background.   

As an example, if you enter W-2 forms or 1099-R forms with state income tax withholding on them, those $$ automatically go into some kind of background list of itemized deductions that are just waiting for you to enter more "stuff" that might push the total over the Std Ded.   So anything entered of that type last year  (quarterly estimates, property taxes, etc ), before you got around to putting in that charity donation last year could have pushed you into itemized ded territory without your realizing it.

Certainly, if you haven't put in  ALL your W-2 forms, or 1099-R forms, or Property taxes yet this year (they all contain state taxes), then the charity donation is unlikely to do anything with your refund value.  Even then, with the $10k, state and local tax limit, it would require a lot of other donations going into your tax return first, before it would  have an refund effect ,due to the higher Std Ded that went into effect in 2018.

Here's where the Desktop software users have a major advantage. They can force the Schedule A to show up in "Forms Mode" and the user can see what totals are adding up to on the Sched A.  Online users can't do that.

[Critter]

The program defaults to the standard deduction until you amass enough deductions to itemize.  The ONLY way that can be different is if you are married filing separately AND you indicate in the MY INFO tab that your spouse will itemize deductions which forces you to also itemize... then any charitable deduction would affect the bottom line.  Is that what you did ?