Long Term Capital Gain tax too high in Turbo Tax 2020?

[scottmsu]

According to the 2020 Long Term Capital Gains rates, for my filing status and income level, I should pay 15% Federal tax on LONG term capital gains.  I added a $1000 long term capital gain into Turbo Tax and that gain was taxed at 35.8%.  How is that possible? For this example, it was a stock sale that was held for 20 years.

[SweetieJean]

Keep in mind that any increase in income can also reduce or eliminate certain deductions/credits. That may be what happened here.

[scottmsu]

Thx for the quick reply, but I don't think I understood your comment.  Can you be more specific?  The $1000 long term capital gain was entered into Turbo Tax as my last entry.  It lowered my Fed tax return by $358 (so 35.8% of the $1000 gain).  I thought it would be $150 (15%).  How can I figure out what is really going on?

[scottmsu]

I tried to compare my "before" and "after" by "saving to PDF" in both scenarios, and then looking into the details to try to understand if something else changed too.  The first BIZARRE thing that I noticed in the "before" scenario was that the "Federal Refund" amount in the PDF was QUITE different than the "Federal Refund" number that is displayed in the top middle of the Turbo Tax software.  How can that happen?  Based on the before and after PDF, the capital gain was taxed at about 18.1%....much closer to what I expected.  Yet according to the top middle box in the Turbo Tax software it would have been 35.8%.  How can the PDF differ from the top "Federal Refund" amount in the software??

[SamS1]

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