Let me specify some background info to help you understand:
- Me and my wife are married and filing jointly in Turbotax Premier website
- Me and my wife are not separated, basically just a couple living together
- We have two young school-aged children, both younger than 14
- None of us is claiming any disability
- Me & my wife are not students currently or in any past filings. Didn't claim any tuition, school related credits ever.
- In the filings my income is around 65k, and wife's is around 28k. Other than the BPA, we don't have other credits
But somehow in Turbotax, a large non-refundable tax credits is auto generated in my wife's filing. I couldn't figure out why. I even re-did everything from scratch, same amount still shows up. This makes her no need to pay any tax, but it's not some credit I expected so I'm worried if I file like this, there would be an issue later on.
In "Bottom Line (tax summaries)" > Detailed Tax Summary, that "Other amounts" in her filing shows:
Taxable income
26000 Taxable income 28,770.88
Federal non-refundable tax credits
30000 Basic personal amount 15,000.00
32300 Your tuition, education, and textbook amounts 13,770.88
33500 Total 28,770.88
33800 Total @ 15% 4,315.63
35000 Total federal non-refundable tax credits 4,315.63
Hope someone can shed some light on this.
As you saw on the return - Her basic personal amount + her tuition, education, and textbook amounts = 28,770.88. 15% of that is 4,315.63, which is her Total federal non-refundable tax credits.
Because it's non-refundable, she likely won't get it all, and maybe not any of it if she has no taxes owing.
The thing is she's not expecting this credit (tuition, education, and textbook amounts) - she is not a student, and didn't claim any tuition / edu credits. We don't know why this credit shows up for her. If without this credit, she'll need to pay tax.
Was she a student in the past? If so she might have had tuition carry forward until this year. You can check the amount in her CRA MyAccount if she has one.
We checked her CRA MyAccount, and mine too, under Benefits and credits, we both don't have any such credits.
Let me add to that - yes, she was a student in the past, but more than twenty years ago. She remembers she didn't submit anything in the past for getting those credits. As mentioned, didn't see anything related under CRA MyAccount.
You can remove the tuition amount by going to Deductions > Students.
Thanks for pointing to this location, I didn't know it exists.
Indeed, in there I can really see an amount under -
Unused tuition and education amounts from previous years, for both Federal & Provincial
Which is the amount where the figure came from in my wife's filing. At least now I know where it came from, not something she filled in but auto populated from CRA records I would have guessed. I wonder when the records got pulled from CRA though, the only time I can remember pulling from CRA is using the auto-fill function, which is for the T-slips I think, not sure about this one.