How can the standard deduction change? It is 25,100 for married filing jointly. TurboTax showed this last month when I finished and was ready to file. Now it is 25650.

[nancycallan]

Last month I completed taxes in TurboTax and was ready to file, but waited till closer to tax day since we owed money. Today when I went to file, the numbers were all different but I had made NO CHANGES. TurboTax now says the Standard Deduction is $25,650??? And it says we owe an underpayment penalty of $25 AND the taxes due went up about $800!  All of this with NO CHANGES.

[Mike9241 · Accepted solution]

was charity $550

the only way to get a standard deduction of 25650 is the standard deduction of 25100 + 550 of cash contributions.

if you saved a PDF copy of the previous version, you can compare line by line to see what else changed. if not the ability is now gone.

[nancycallan · Accepted solution]

YES! 

Thank you for explaining this!! They give no indication of it, but it makes sense why they did it.

When I first prepared my taxes and had them ready to file a while back, there was a known bug with the special 2021 allowance of the $600 in charitable contributions. It caused me issues and I had to look it up. So in the meantime, this must have been their workaround to avoid that. It would have been smart of them to note that somewhere rather than just amending the "Standard" deduction.