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Child and Dependent Care Credit Filing Problem

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
May 10, 2021
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We are filing "Married Filing Jointly" and both of us work and have earned income. However, whenever I tried to enter information for "Child and Dependent Care Credit" on Turbotax (Home & Business, Mac), then I got faced with the question if either of us "was a full-time student" or "was disabled" and whenever I selected "none of the above" for both of us then we got back to the main menu. As far as I understand, if both of us have earned income (I already entered both of our W-2), then this question should not even pop up.

When I tried to search for form 2441 to enter manually, then while TurboTax allows me to enter the information about the care provider, it refuses to let me type in information for my child (name and expense for her).

Could someone help me with how to successfully get TurboTax to handle "Child and Dependent Care Credit" for me? Thanks.

Best answer by DawnC

Thanks, Dawn. I believe that I have my kids listed correctly. One of my kids is not 12 year old yet so I think she should qualify. In the "Personal Info" section all of my kids are listed as "Dependent" by TurboTax. Both of us work for different companies and we both have W-2 from those companies. And I double check the "Personal Info" section and our filling status is "Married filing jointly".

I would like to get to the step of putting in the information for the caregiver but so far TurboTax doesn't allow me to do that, whenever I click on the "Update" button on the "Child and Dependent Care Credit" item it first ask the question "Did you pay for child and dependent care in 2020?" and when I answer "Yes" it go to the "Tell Us More About XXX and YYY" with checkboxes for if we are "full-time student" or "disabled" or "none of the above" (I chose "None of the Above" and it immediately goes back to the main menu). As far as I understand, that question about "full-time student" and "disabled" should not even pop up with both of us have earned income as indicated by entering two different W-2 separately for two of us).

I even tried to go to the "Forms" menu, search for the 2441 form and tried entering information manually but as I described in previous message TurboTax doesn't let me enter information related to my kid in that 2441 form directly.

PS: I have always used TurboTax desktop (different versions) for more than 10 years to file my tax but this is the first time that there is a problem that is this hard to figure out what I did wrong. Is it possible that TurboTax Home & Business 2020 has a bug related to this particular item?

It sounds like the earned income from the W-2s still may not be showing correctly. When you go into Forms Mode and review the Wages, Etc. Wks (that is how it is titled in the list of forms )worksheet, does it show information on Line 1 for both of you?

There is also a worksheet titled Earned Inc. Wks that you can look at to verify both you and your spouse and showing earned income. Part ll refences the Child and Dependent Care credit details.

And even though I am sure it has been mentioned, make sure the kids' birthdays are correct. Everyone's social entered?

CatinaT1

Go back and review your w2 entries and make sure you have them correctly entered as TP W2 and Spouse W2. I suspect you have both W2's assigned to one of you so the program thinks one spouse didn't have income.

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Y

YochaniteAuthor

Thanks Catina. I checked and the two W-2 that I put in are listed under two different names (one for my wife and one for me). The only difference is that I used different approaches to enter them: for my W-2 I was able to import it automatically but for my wife I couldn't so had to enter it manually.

Therefore, if I click on the "Edit" button for my entry then the first line says "Enter (My Name)'s W-2" and the first item is "This W-2 belongs to" with the two checkboxes for "My Name" and "My Spouse Name" as the two options to choose from.

However, if I click on the "Edit" button for my wife's entry then while the first line says "Enter (My Spouse Name)'s W-2" there is NO "This W-2 belongs to" item.

Is this somehow related to the "Child and Dependent Care Credit" problem that I mentioned? Also, my wife works for school district since I saw a question about if the "employer is state or local government" when entered her W-2. Not sure if that's related but I just want to mention just in case.

Thanks.

AmyC

Employee

You may want to delete both w2 forms and enter them again to be sure you have each assigned to the correct spouse. Once the assignment is correct, the child care will calculate.

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