How do I enter my spouse's non-refundable tax credit in order for TurboTax to not give an error when I claim the Family Tax Cut?

[mikef01]

TurboTax gives me the following error at the `Review` stage:

You are claiming the Family Tax Cut. You must enter your spouse's non-refundable tax credits to correctly calculate the amount that you are claiming.

I've gone back through the `income` interview stages, and answered every question there. (In case it matters, my spouse had zero income during 2014.) The only way that I can seem to clear this error is to not claim the Family Tax Cut.

[TonyC11 · Accepted solution]

On your wife's return you must have a non-refundable credit amount in line 350.
Even though she has no income to report, she will still at least have a personal credit amount, and perhaps others. Ordinarily and actually, thus credit is ineffective for her, since she does not owe taxes, but you must still complete a return for her.

FTC uses the notional amount of both line 350s ( on your return and hers ) to arrive at the FTC calculation. Go back into her return and ensure you have reported credits.

[mikef01]

Thanks for the explanation. It's still no clear, however, how to report a credit for my spouse using the TurboTax interview. There doesn't seem to be an opportunity to report credits for my spouse.

[TonyC11]

Are you using joint preparation? If so, your wife's Personal amount is entered automatically. If you are not using Joint prep. then your wife's return is not present and hence no credits available. In that case you'd need to access your wife's return in order to find the line 350 credit amount. FTC won't calculate without this,

Joint prep. Is the preferred method if you are hoping for FTC.

[mldlm]

Turbotax has let us all down by making the online version incompatible with the family tax calculation! Over to H&R Block I go...