For various reasons this year was a very labor intensive year for entering in my tax information. We had a lot of forms and manual calculations in order to determine what amount to enter into different sections. After all of that work. TurboTax recommended that I take the the standard $24,000 deduction form my wife and I - filing jointly - instead of the itemized deductions. In this year in which so many people are reporting that their refunds are lower, I noticed my refund was considerable lower than in the past, but I understood why. I almost just accepted the recommendation from TurboTax and moved on. However, I played with it and realized this was very bad advice! Under the standard deduction, my federal return was (rounding) $1,300 and my state return was $200. I played with the that deduction and chose to itemize my deductions instead just to see the difference. My federal tax return dropped to about $900 (seems bad, right) but my state return increased to $900. I picked up $300 in total by choosing the other method. TurboTax shouldn't recommend a deduction. They should give us you a screen that more encourages you to more easily play with a "what if" scenario. Have a screen with a toggle that say "Click here to see what happens if you take the standard dedcution" and "Click here to see what happens when you itemize your deductions. Instead, I got a screen saying "TurboTax recommends you use the standard deduction of $24,000." To change that methodology requires you to click on several boxes in order to see what happens.
