Why is turbo tax giving me a $4800 stimulus credit?

[Tom1129]

I opened my 2020 turbotax  (home and business) today to take a look at where I stand on my 2020 taxes.  I answered the step-by-step questions concerning the economic stimulus where I stated that I had not received any stimulus checks yet (since my income in 2019 was too high for an advance on this credit).  After I did that, it seems like Turbotax had given me to much credit.  I looked at the 1040, and turbotax was showing that we (I am married with no other dependents) were due a $4800 tax credit.  I was expecting each of us to get $1200 from the first round of stimulus and $600 for the second round, for a total of  $3600 (($1200+$600)x2).  I looked at the Recovery Rebate Credit Worksheet that turbotax generated and in line 5 the form says to enter either $1200 if you are single, or $2400 if you are married filing jointly.  Turbotax had entered $3600 instead.  This seems like a mistake.  

[ThomasM125]

I agree that the stimulus payment based on what you entered should be $3,600. If you are using the desktop version of TurboTax, make sure you have done the updates (Online, then Check for Updates). If you are using the online version of TurboTax, you can try clearing the cache and cookies on your computer, as it may be things are not calculating properly.

If none of that works, you can contact an agent at TurboTax and they can pull a diagnostic copy of your program to see what is not working properly.

[Tom1129]

The reason this happened was because I used one of the early releases of TurboxTax 2020 to estimate my taxes for 2020.  I recall that I entered $2400 ($1200x2) into the form manually as I did not see a step-by-step question about it (it may have been there and I didn't find it).   When Congress authorized the additional $600 per person, TurboTax updated the software.  After I updated the software I opened my file again and did find  the step-by-step question and answered it (stating that we did not receive any stimulus money during the year).  After I did that, the number in the form should have been $3600 (($1200+$600)x2) but instead it showed $4800.  I called support and asked about this, the solution we found was  to manually enter the correct numbers in the form.  The TurboTax support line did not have much of an explanation on why this happened, although they did claim that an important recent Windows 10 update had not been done on my computer.  I personally think it was a bug in the TurboTax software.