Why doesn't Turbotax transfer charitable donations to higher-earning spouse, even when selecting optimization override?

[reading7barnsley]

I checked the button to transfer all donations to higher-earning spouse but nothing changed.  Neither spouse is close to the 75% of earnings limit for donations.  Instead the donations continue to be listed under the lower earning spouse's summary with an amount to be carried forward to next year.   Is it legal to delete all donations and re-enter them under the higher-earning spouse's name?

[TonyC11 · Accepted solution]

Of course. You can assign donations to one or other spouse as you please.

In general if both spouses have sufficient tax payable, it doesn't matter which spouse gets donation credit, it's just the same. What usually does make sense is to combine all donations on one spouse or the other, which is what the software us doing.

If you wish to assign credits to one spouse specifically, you will need to prepare each return separately rather than Yse the joint preparation mode.

Regarding donation carryforward, be aware that this is purely a software feature, not recognised by CRA . They don't track unused donations. They only care about what you claim in the current tax year. 

If you have  more donation credit than you need, don't claim it now, save it for next year.

[reading7barnsley]

Thanks, this is helpful but doesn't answer the part about what appears to be an optimizer glitch.  First the optimizer fails to allocate donations to the higher earner in the first place so the lower earner end up with carry forward donations - even though there is room to claim them this year against the higher earner.  Secondly, when I choose to override the optimizer and allocate all donations to the higher earning spouse, the software maintains the (faulty) optimization.  To overcome this I simply re-entered all donations against the higher earning spouse, regardless of which spouse is actually named on the tax receipt.  This worked perfectly; it maximized our refund and there are no carry forwards.  As long as it is legal to allocate my wife's tax receipts to my name then all is well - which is how I read your answer.  Thanks!

[TurboTaxSusan]

We have applied an update to TurboTax Online that should resolve the donations issue. Please go back to the donations section of the TurboTax Interview and verify the information is entered correctly. You can do this by selecting Deductions > Payments Profile > Donations Profile on the left side menu and continuing to the Maximizing Your Donations page.