You'll need to sign in or create an account to connect with an expert.
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
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 $$ yet (can't get a refund unless you've entered that withholding, or other tax payments already made for 2019).
Last year, I entered $20 worth of charitable donations, without itemizing, and my refund went UP. This year, $540 did nothing. I’ll say that again, a $20 donation INCREASED my refund last year WITHOUT itemizing.
Don't know what you did last year however charitable deductions have ALWAYS been on the Sch A so if you do not have enough to itemize it will not make a difference. Review the 2018 return and see what form/line that $20 showed up on.
Yeah, that behavior rom last year is interesting, but you may not really know when the software starts using itemized deductions. IT determines that automatically in the background.
As an example, if you enter W-2 forms or 1099-R forms with state income tax withholding on them, those $$ 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.
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 ?
Still have questions?
Make a postAsk questions and learn more about your taxes and finances.
katehailey
New Member
Jordan40
Level 1
BZ10
New Member
vakerr66
New Member
peggles0224
New Member
Did the information on this page answer your question?
You have clicked a link to a site outside of the TurboTax Community. By clicking "Continue", you will leave the Community and be taken to that site instead.