"Total Care Expenses" and FSA amount

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
January 28, 2022
1 reply
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I notice that in "Easy Steps" of TurboTax 2021 "Total Care Expenses" shows actual care expense minus FSA dependent care contribution. So if your FSA contrition is the same as care expenses, the number would be 0. But in TurboTax 2020 "Total Care Expenses" is the actual care expense. Anybody else noticing this?

JillS56

Level 10

When dependent care expenses are paid by FSA funds they cannot be claimed. Only the amount above the FSA may be claimed. TurboTax 2021 is eliminating a potential problem by asking for the total amount of daycare expense. TurboTax can tell from the entry of your W-2 that you had an FSA. With these questions, TurboTax can make sure that you get the correct amount of credit. TurboTax will still show the expense even through it is not giving a credit based on the entry.

Here is an article on the ins and outs of Dependent Care.

pentiumlxfAuthor

Level 2

Thanks for the quick response. So Turbotax 2021 intentionally change the way of showing the care expenses. Anyway, even with this display difference, it seems that Turbotax 2021 and Turbotax 2020's internal calculation is the same for FSA dependent care (the actual care expense needs to be larger than the FSA contribution, otherwise the taxable W2 wage would be increased by the gap).