My partner has unclaimed donations from several previous years but his net income this year was zero. CRA form 5000-s9-20e makes it very clear that either partner can claim unused donations from previous years:
Include the eligible amount of all the donations you want to claim this year that you or your spouse or common-law partner made in 2020 or in any of the previous 5 years that have not been claimed before.
However, although TurboTax knows about these unclaimed donations, it won't let me claim more than this year's donations on my return. How do I get around this?
Although TurboTax carries forward unused donations from year to year, and this is shown in the Charitable donations worksheet, this information isn't submitted to the CRA and appears only in the archive copy of the return. Because of this, TurboTax has a page where it asks you to confirm or update the carried forward amounts from previous years. I made a note of these amounts from my partner's return and then set them all to zero. On the corresponding page for my return, where the amounts were all zero, I entered the amounts that had been on my partner's return. I was then able to claim these amounts on my return for this year and carry forward an unused portion of this year's donations to next year.
Although TurboTax carries forward unused donations from year to year, and this is shown in the Charitable donations worksheet, this information isn't submitted to the CRA and appears only in the archive copy of the return. Because of this, TurboTax has a page where it asks you to confirm or update the carried forward amounts from previous years. I made a note of these amounts from my partner's return and then set them all to zero. On the corresponding page for my return, where the amounts were all zero, I entered the amounts that had been on my partner's return. I was then able to claim these amounts on my return for this year and carry forward an unused portion of this year's donations to next year.