Why my refund decrease when I add expenses?

[txkpt]

I do ubereats, doordash, and few others and also amazon.  turbo put all the food income under "food delivery" and Amazon as "delivery driver".  I also have a photo work that I no longer do do I just delete this?  When I try to enter example gas or mileage on to one of those my refund goes down but if I don't enter any expenses my federal and state refund goes up.  help please what should I do.

[LindaS5247]

When your refund drops after you enter expenses, it is likely because you were getting some type of tax credit where your income was at a certain level. When you entered the expense, your income dropped, causing you to qualify for a smaller credit or no credit.

An example would be the Earned Income Credit (EIC).  The Earned Income Credit increases as your income goes up until it hits a certain level and then it goes back down to $0.  

To figure out why this happened in your situation, look at your 1040 with the expenses added and write them down or print it out.  Then go back and remove the expenses, look at your 1040 with the expenses removed, then compare the two.  This will tell you where the change is coming from. 

To preview your return, follow the steps below for the TurboTax program you are using:

You can view your entire return or just your 1040 form before you e-file:

1. Sign in to your TurboTax account.
2. Open or continue your return.
3. Select Tax Tools from the menu (if you don't see this, select the menu icon in the upper-left corner).
4. With the Tax Tools menu open, you can then:
   • Preview your entire return: Select Print Center and then Print, save or preview this year's return (you may be asked to register or pay first).
   • View only your 1040 form: Select Tools. Next, select View Tax Summary in the pop-up, then Preview my 1040 in the left menu.

You can preview your return in the TurboTax Desktop software by following these steps:

1. With your return open in TurboTax, select Preview from the File menu at the top. (If you don't see "Preview," open your return, not just the program).
2. In the pop-up window, choose the set of forms you wish to see (all official forms, specific forms, etc.) and select Preview.
3. Scroll down to view all the forms if you choose to preview multiple forms.

If you did no business with your photo work in 2023, you can delete that Schedule C . Don't delete your business if it closed sometime in 2023. Instead, report the business and make sure you select I stopped [your business] in 2023 on the Tell us about how long you've worked in [your business] screen. See below for instruction.

Click here for information on deleting a Schedule C.
 

Click here for helpful information on entering business expenses in TurboTax.

Click here for information on closing a business in TurboTax.