Do i still deduct childcare expenses if reimbursed by pretax childcare savings account? Still paid the money, so still a deduction, right?

[finances]

Wife's work has pretax savings plan auto-depositing to reimburse ourselves for childcare.  Do we log nannies and daycamps as childcare expenses even though there's pretax reimbursal going on?

[IsabellaG]

No, because if it's pre-tax, you've already excluded your payments from income taxes. Taking an additional deduction would be double-deducting (once by excluding the money from tax and again by taking a deduction), and it's not allowed. 

See Dependent Care Benefits on page 10 of this link:

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p503.pdf 

[finances]

Thank you but I'm still confused.  According to this article on Turbotax, I'm supposed to enter the total cost of childcare expenses, which are then automatically deducted by the pretax amount entered in box 10 of the W2 section.  <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/4193843">https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/4193843</a>

When I supply my total cost in the Child Credit, it sees the value from the W2 and, since our expenses did not exceed the 5K, it says we don't qualify.  This is fine and matches up to what you're saying.

However, our return is still higher when answering these questions honestly (did we pay for expenses?  yes.).  There is nothing in your questions around the Child Care Credit which says we should not enter any expenses which were reimbursed by our FSA and not entering the total amount contradicts the link I provided above.

Is there a question somewhere around whether we have Dependent Care benefit that I've answered incorrectly or something?  If not, why does my return go up when I answer the Child Care Credit childcare expense questions?

[finances]

I *think* I did it right?  I see this advice in another turbotax question in your knowledgebase:

Where do i put money Received childcare for reimbursement
Recommended Answer
Generally, Box 10 of your W-2 will report Dependent Care Benefits (DCB) ($5000) in TurboTax.

If this is the case, enter the full amount paid to the Provider (whether reimbursed or not) on the Child Care screen.

[IsabellaG]

Yes, that is correct. It's just that you won't get a credit because you paid for the expense with pretax money. If you paid out more than the employer plan reimbursed, you'd get an additional credit.

[finances]

That's fine - I don't mind not getting the credit.  I just wanted to be sure I was doing it correctly since listing those childcare expenses increases our refund amount significantly even though it says the credit doesn't apply.

This note appears to confirm that I should be entering the expenses there even though we get reimbursed:
<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3856390">https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3856390</a>