you know, it would appear it should be easy to plug in a number for federal tax, married filing jointly, and come up with an answer - some "calculators" are way off - is there a "form" or "schedule" in my turbotax printouts that show "the math" ?????
There are several, depending on what is on your tax return. Look at line 16 on the 1040 - this shows several forms that might be used.
Furthermore, in other cases, there may be worksheets, like for Qualifying Dividends and Capital Gains, one which the income tax due is calculated because Qualifying Dividends and Capital Gains are not taxed at the same rate as Ordinary Income.
In short, the magic place to plug in the number and get the answer does not exist, because there are several different calculations, depending on the content of your return.
Once you look at line 16 and don't see any checked boxes, the next thing for you to do is to look in all the worksheets and supporting forms to see if any of them show how the tax is calculated.
BillM - thanks for reply !
i would think that turbotax would have a schedule that grouped return lines for each "type" of tax calculation-Qualifying Dividends/ and LT Capital Gains/Losses, and then the rest i guess as ORdinary Income-somewhere in the programming logic, that happens to come up with the final total tax owed, and i dont know why it is not a printed "Schedule" or "form"
but, thanks for the reply
i actually sent my 2024 tax return lines to AI, and it grouped lines in separate "tax" concepts ( like above) and verified ( actually pretty close) to the turbotax number
thanks again
mike