I've spent many hours trying to enter the Form 1116 Foreign Tax Credit information from Vanguard 1099-Div forms into TurboTax. I think that I have succeeded, but I am not confident.
Vanguard referred me to document on their website ("2024 Foreign tax credit information for eligible Vanguard funds"). The first column on that document is headed "Foreign Source Income percentage of Box 1a of Form 1099-DIV*. To calculate the Foreign Source Income, multiply the percentage below by the amount of Box 1a." But Box 1a on form 1099-Div refers to all of my dividend income, so it is not logical to multiply that amount by the foreign percentage for a particular fund.
The detail section of the Vanguard 1099-DIV helpfully provides, for each fund, the amounts for qualified dividend, non-qualified dividend, ST gains, LT gains, and foreign taxes withheld/paid. For each fund there is a "Total dividends & distributions." My FIRST QUESTION is should I interpret "Box 1a" as a casual way of referring to the "Total dividends & distributions", which include both dividends and capital gains?
Similarly, column 2 of the document provides "Qualified Foreign Dividend Income as a percentage of Box 1a of Form 1099-DIV* To calculate the Qualified Foreign Dividend Income, multiply the percentage below by the amount of Box 1a." Again, I am interpreting Box 1a as referring to the "Total dividends & distributions" at the end of each funds dividends and capital gains in the detail section of the 1099 - even though the totals include short-term gains and non-qualified dividends. [I am assuming that the percentages in column two, which are smaller than the ones in column one, reflect the inclusion of non-qualified dividends and short-term gains in the totals]. So my SECOND QUESTION is whether multiplying the column two percentage by the "Total dividends & distributions" does give me the Qualified dividends and Long-term capital gains to enter in TurboTax.
My THIRD QUESTION concerns the TurboTax worksheet "Foreign Tax Credit Carryovers", in which the two columns are headed "Foreign taxes" and "Amount used". Should the first column actually be headed "Maximum foreign tax credit allowed", so that subtracting column two from column one would yield the carryover amount from each year?
I have spent many hours on this rather absurd matter, including telephone calls with Vanguard and Turbotax-experienced family members. I will be most grateful specific answers to the above questions!
