Why sign in to the Community?

  • Submit a question
  • Check your notifications
Sign in to the Community or Sign in to TurboTax and start working on your taxes
New Member
posted Feb 17, 2021 11:10:01 AM

Is there a search function that can find a particular item

where is the "foreign tax paid?"

0 2 242
2 Replies
Expert Alumni
Feb 17, 2021 11:35:12 AM

Both the credit and the deduction are entered in the same place. Here's what you do:

  1. Make sure you've entered all your foreign income.
  2. From within your return, search for foreign tax credit and select the Jump to link in the search results.
  3. Answer Yes to Did you pay foreign taxes in 2020 or have credits to use from a prior year?
  4. Follow the instructions to get the credit or deduction.

In most cases, taking the credit works out better than the deduction. We'll help you decide which one's best for you when you go through this section.

If you choose to take the credit (most people do), we'll attach Form 1116Foreign Tax Credit if your situation requires it.

Note: You won't be able to take a credit or deduction for taxes paid (or accrued) on excluded foreign earned income or housing. This is because excluded income and housing isn't taxed in the first place.

Related Information:

Level 2
Feb 22, 2025 2:03:08 PM

I really have not found a GOOD one in 5 years of using TurboTax.   For example, today I wanted to find a particular 1099 that was imported from one of my financial institutions, using the account number.... which isn't in the title of of the listing of the aprroximately 40 1099s I have.    Or the 10 1099s I have from the applicable one financial institution.  

What I HAVE found is a crutch, a work around.... that works surprisingly well:

When you print a copy of your tax return as a pdf... it is a SEARCHABLE PDF!
I'm using TuboTax Deluyxe 2024 for windows... I don't know if other editions are different, but in that edition, there is a thin black ribbon across the top, and in the right hand end of that ribbon are three menu items, the middle one of which is "Print Center"

Click on that, It asks what forms you want to print.   I click "Tax Return, all calculation sheets" then click "save as PDF".   I add "PFS" (Printed For Searching) after the file name, so I know it is an incomplete return, and then open the pdf file and search for what I want to find. 

In this manner, I can at least find the pertinent worksheet, and then use the name the payee on the worksheet to look for the form I'm looking for in the list of forms in form view.

++++
And more specific to your question:   I did a search in my current searchable pdf version of my 2024 tax return, and found 24 instances of the text string "foreign tax paid", and could jump to each in turn.