Child Care Credit

[jsoles24]

Drawing a blank!! UGH!!  Why does ProSeries only take the Taxpayer's earned income to compute the child care credit for Married Filing Joint couples and not the total earned income for the Taxpayer and Spouse? 

[TaxGirl3]

Generally, both need earned income in order to qualify.  The idea behind the credit is that you paid someone else to provide the care so you (and spouse if married) can work or look for work.

See IRS Pub 503

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

I dont quite follow your post, but did you forget to tag the spouse W2 to them and everything has the taxpayers SSN on it?

[jsoles24]

Each W2 has the respective taxpayer and spouse's SSN. So no I didn't tag the spouse W2 to the taxpayer. 

What I'm asking is this: Taxpayer earned income $60,000; Spouse earned income $30,000. Form 2441 is only using $60,000 earned income to compute the credit. The form doesn't use the total earned income of $90,000.

[rbynaker]

If there's a Sch C with a loss that will reduce earned income.  Otherwise, once in a while files get corrupted, you could always try deleting the 2441 and starting it over from scratch.

[Just-Lisa-Now-]

Im looking at one I did yesterday, I see the TP income on Line 4 and the SP income on Line 5 of the 2441...is Line 5 blank for you?