@JES33 - I can try to answer some of your questions. But first, what I did was look at the 1116 I got from TurboTax for my 2020 tax return.
In my case, all of the foreign tax was on a 1099-DIV I got from a mutual fund company. If you look at the first page of 1116, you will see in Part 1, there are columns A, B, C. So you can handle 3 different countries on the same form. In my case, since it all came on 1099-DIV from a mutual fund company, I didn't need to specify countries. On line 1 in column A, I specified RIC (Regulated Investment Company). On line 1a, in the dotted line, I wrote "From 1099s", then under the A column, I entered the amount of foreign income, which I calculated from info that my mutual fund company supplied (in 2000, my 1099 actually specified that amount of foreign income).
On line 2, 2e (gross income from all sources) was the only tricky one for me. It can be more than our federal AGI (line 11 of AGI). I had to add back all the individual losses I had from my 1099-B. Here's a rough example.
AGI (line 11 of form 1040) 50,000
Four stock trades reported on 1099-B : Two were gains : 1000, 2000. Two were losses : (1250), (500)
To get line 2e, You add 50000 + 1250 +500 = 51750
For me, the rest of the form was pretty straightforward. I had no mortgage interest, but I would think the worksheet wouldn't be hard. Part 2 only had the "paid" box checked, used 12/31 as the paid date on line A, and only an entry in the "dividends" column in the US dollars section (column q) and on the far right (column u).
That's about all I have. As far as why 1116 says "do not file", it's because it has not yet been completed because TT hasn't updated the software yet.
