Sales Tax vs State Income Tax Deduction: TurboTax Displays Wrong Number on Summary Page

[TomSweazy]

Reference Step-by-Step Section: 

Federal Return / Your 2020 Deductions & Credits / Estimates and Other Taxes Paid / Sales Tax

TurboTax explains that I can deduct either my State Sales Tax or my State/Local Income Tax.   The Step-by-Step questionnaire starts with a comparison of the following two items:

1)   "Your state and local income tax deduction" 

2)  "Your estimated state sales tax deduction"  (a standard default amount is offered)

I choose to NOT enter my actual Sales Taxes from 2020 and allowed TurboTax to consider the default amount.  However, I subsequently chose to NOT pursue the option of "Try Sales Tax Calculation Anyway" because my State and Local Income Tax Deduction was ~$2000 more than the default State Sales Tax Deduction.   As a result, TurboTax should have automatically chosen the larger amount.  However, upon completing the Step-by-Step section, the year-over-year summary page entitled "Your 2020 Deductions and Credits"  showed $0.00 dollars for 2020; it wasn't even the finite lesser value of 1) or 2) above.  It should have been the higher amount.

A similar issue occurred in TurboTax 2019, but in that case, TurboTax did display a dollar amount on the summary page but it was the LESSER of the 1) and 2) above.  I checked my 2018 return and the amount displayed on the summary page was correct.

However, upon reviewing the Schedule A form as created by TurboTax, the larger value was correctly entered onto Schedule A.  The optional checkbox on Schedule A that would switch the deduction to the Sales Tax Deduction was [correctly] not checked.

So for this issue, the symptom is that although TurboTax 2019 and 2020 both use the correct number on Schedule A, it display the wrong amount on the year-over-year "Your 2020(2019) Deductions & Credits" summary page.  This was not the case for TurboTax 2018;  the correct larger number appeared on both Schedule A and the Step-by-Step year-over-year summary page.

Is this a flaw in the software or is it pilot error?  Has anyone else experienced this?

[BillM223 · Accepted solution]

The Summary pages show what has been entered, not what is used on the tax return. For example, on the Wages & Income Summary, distributions from an HSA are shown as if they are income, even though they normally are not income. That is, the Summary screen showed what was entered, not what ended up being taxable on line 8 of Schedule 1 (1040).

You did the right thing in searching the filed forms, because only the numbers on the actual return matter.

I do not know why they change what's listed on the Summary form time to time, but in a way, it doesn't matter, so long as you understand (as you do) to always check the actual return before believing the Summary page.