Thanks, Karl.  I appreciate you took the time to investigate a solution. Although setting up the spouse as a dependent works for getting the credit to calculate, it also throws the MA tax liability off by claiming a $1,000 dependent exemption deduction on the MA return.  Hopefully, Lacerte will either fix this, provide a workaround (other than paper filing and whiteout) or at least communicate that it is a known issue that they are addressing.