Problem with TurboTax Deluxe online MFJ - stimulus rebate

[Anonymous]

I am looking to use TurboTax deluxe online to file my 2020 taxes as married filing jointly. With combined income < 150k, I believe I am eligible to receive the full $3600 stimulus payment. I only received $573 in 2020 cumulative so I expect to get the remaining $3027, however the TT Deluxe show we will only receive $1227 which makes me believe it is only counting for 1 individual. Called up support and they told me to upgrade to live expert advice which I thought was laughable since I am telling them there might be a glitch but they want me to pay them to look into it. I'd rather spend less money with H&R block and get more refund than to deal with these entitled support agents. Anyone encounter this glitch or am I wrong with my analysis?

[AmyC]

The program verifies that the child is a dependent and that you lived in the US more than half the year. Some people mark they lived outside the US mistakenly. Some people mark that the child supported him/herself.

The child must qualify for the child tax credit and be under 17. For full rules, see Economic Impact Payments.

I recommend you go back through the program and read the questions again. 

[Anonymous]

Appreciate your reply, but child credit is not involved in my filing.

[Opus 17 · Accepted solution]

Are you using the program installed on your own computer or the online version?  Is your wife a US citizen or green card holder, did she live in the United States for more than half the year, and does she have a valid Social Security number?  Make sure your filing status is married filing jointly and that you did not accidentally check married filing separately.

If you are using the online program there is very little the volunteers on this forum can do to help diagnose, since the internal program worksheets are not available to you, and we can’t see your file. However, the telephone operator should not have told you to upgrade to the Live version.

If these suggestions did not help, the only additional thing I can suggest is to go to the help menu and select “send file to agent.“ This creates an anonymous version of your file and uploads it to tech-support, and gives you a six digit token number. If you post that token number here, I can send your post to a moderator for review and someone can look at that file associated with that token number and try to figure out what’s wrong.  I can also flag this post to have a moderator look into why you were told to upgrade to Live. That phone operator probably needs more training.

[Anonymous]

Thank you! I think your answer and a related answer here helped me figure out the problem. It is apparently the ITIN for my spouse that makes only one individual eligible. Would have been nice to see this explanation in the summary part in the online version which talks about the rebate credit I will receive. 

Really appreciate your comprehensive explanation and offer to review. 🙂

[Opus 17]

Unfortunately, Congress wrote the law to require a valid Social Security number.  I can suggest this issue for an in-program enhancement to the instructions.  however, in all frankness, enhancements like this are the programmers’ lowest priority.