Stimulus payments

[vvhere]

Why is our Stimulus Payments reducing - eliminating our 2020 tax refund and changing it to Tax Due??

We are filing Married Joint return and our 2019 AGI was $155,016  and our 2020 AGI was $148.231.  We paid $12,500 in Federal Estimated Taxes in 2020 but with the 1st Stimulus Payments of $2,148 plus the 2nd Stimulus Payment $949 our refund was changed from $2,901Refund to $197 Tax Due. All the infos regarding the Stimulus Payment claim that it will not reduce any tax refund due and it is not reported as a taxable income.  Thank you for any help or explanation.

[Opus 17]

This is an illusion.  As soon as you enter your income that is below the max limit for the stimulus payment/rebate, Turbotax gives you credit for it.  Then when you later tell Turbotax you already got the payment, the credit is removed.

The refund meter is always misleading because the result is never final until all your facts and information is added, but this makes it worse than usual.  

[vvhere]

Hello, thank you  for your answer and explanation - however I am still not clear/convinced about the whole situation with my taxes and we will file the return as the TurboTax suggests.

After entering the Stimulus payments received

The TurboTax then has  this statement –

"After you file, the IRS will double-check these numbers before approving you for this credit"

Which in our case is $502 as is shown in the 2020 TurboTax Deluxe.

So we are still trying to understand why are there those claims about the Stimulus payments being as not reported as taxable income or not reducing or effecting the final taxes - Due or Refundable.