Apparently the 8812 changed from a Form to a Schedule back in 2012 and I never noticed. <shrug>
The first draft of Schedule 8812 that I saw was dated July 22, 2021. Looks like no substantive changes were made on the Nov. 4 draft, just some minor wording changes in Part II-A and Part III. My printed copy from July has a nice big bold "stop here" on 16a that has since been removed. When I looked at the form, er, schedule, late in the summer the instructions were not released yet and the form makes reference to both a "Line 5 Worksheet" and a "Credit Limit Worksheet A" (because a 3 page form just does not contain enough lines to calculate everything, so you need supplemental 12-line and 14-line worksheets from the instructions in order to figure this out). It's likely that ProSeries could not program the form without seeing those worksheets which may have only been released recently (and are still only in draft form--or possibly in draft schedule).
But in any case, anyone installing the software in November has unwittingly signed up to be an Alpha tester (Beta testers are anyone who installs the software from December through February with recent COVID extensions making that more like May for federal returns, and July/August for some states this year--I can see you MD folks nodding your heads in agreement!)
Looks like I might have to add a new tab to my tax recap spreadsheet just for the 8812 calculations for the under 6, under 18, other dependent, advance amounts, phase outs, safe harbors and phase out of safe harbor so I can figure out refundable, non-refundable, repayable and non-repayable. And there are at least three places where you might need to enter information from "Letter(s) 6419".
Rick
