The credit is clear that you can claim it prior to a placement or even if you never have one. Our expenses started in 2021, so we want to use them for the credit in 2022. However, we have not had a placement or finalized an adoption yet. TurboTax seems to require a name, birthday, and social for it to be accepted. We don't have those and shouldn't need them. What am I missing? Has anyone figured this out before?
IRS Form 8839 Qualified Adoption Expenses requires the child information.
As stated on the Form - https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8839.pdf
Information About Your Eligible Child or Children—You must complete this part.
The IRS website (and the turbotax website) make it very clear that you don't need to have adopted a child yet to claim the credit, which means you wouldn't have that information.
"A domestic adoption is the adoption of a U.S. child (an eligible child who is a citizen or resident of the U.S. or its possessions before the adoption effort begins). Qualified adoption expenses paid before the year the adoption becomes final are allowable as a credit for the tax year following the year of payment (even if the adoption is never finalized and even if an eligible child was never identified)."
https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc607
According to the instructions you would just leave those fields blank:
"If you can't give complete information about an eligible child you tried to adopt in 2021 because the adoption was either unsuccessful or wasn't final by the end of 2022, complete the entries that you can on line 1. Leave blank any entries you are unable to complete."
https://www.irs.gov/instructions/i8839#en_US_2022_publink23077td0e752
TurboTax developers have worked on this situation in the program. You should be able to claim the adoption credit without being required to list a specific child's name and other information on the form in the case of a failed adoption attempt. This matches the IRS instructions saying that those fields can be left blank if you do not have the information.
There may still be a flag on the screen asking for missing information, but you can proceed with claiming the credit without entering the info being flagged.
Are you allowed to e-file without this personal information or would you have to paper file?