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April 18, 2021
Question

So, this new unemployment tax return thing has left me with 2 questions. My spouse didn't work, will I still get 20,400 credit? Will I now get EITC if my taxable fell in

  • April 18, 2021
  • 1 reply
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I made 56k, just barely above EITC after unemployment.

1 reply

Employee
April 18, 2021

The exclusion is $10,200 per person who received unemployment. It is not doubled for a married couple of filing jointly if only one of the spouses had unemployment compensation.

 

The removal of the excluded income may in fact make you eligible for earned income credit. This is a complicated situation, and I don’t know what to tell you about what to do next.  The IRS had said that it will be re-calculating tax returns and paying refunds starting in May.  If you claimed EIC and the exclusion changes the amount, the IRS will re-calculate the amount of EIC, but if you never claimed EIC, the IRS will not add it for you.

(But remember also, you are barred from EIC if you have more than $3000 of unearned income. So if your unemployment was more than $13,200, you will still be barred from EIC because you will still have more than $3000 of taxable unearned income.) 

 

If you file an amended return now, it won’t be processed by the IRS until after they issue the automatic unemployment refund, at which point  your amended return won’t match the return that the IRS has on file for you, which may cause it to get bounced without being processed.  Also, TurboTax is blocking amended returns for unemployment because the IRS has announced that they will do it automatically.

 

I think the most reasonable course for now is to wait for the IRS to pay the adjustment for the UEC exclusion.  At that point, your official tax return as on file with the IRS will be the adjusted return.  You can then file an amended return to claim EIC if you are eligible, but this will require some manual adjustments in TurboTax so that the base return for the amendment matches the adjusted return that’s on file with the IRS instead of your original Turbotax rerun.  Hopefully, TurboTax will have additional information about this situation as time moves forward.