I spent 2 1/2 hours on the phone yesterday with Lacerte and the representative that I spoke with understood what I was saying but could not get those above her to budge.  I am sorry that I didn't write a full and accurate description of the problem but I had writer's fatigue from writing two different cases explaining how the program was incorrect.  I even stated verbatim the instructions from the Kentucky Schedule A and a written response from the state that I received which it states in part that you are allowed to take the greater of the itemized deductions or standard deduction for Kentucky purposes regardless of how you reported itemized deductions for federal purposes.

If the programmers would have followed the wording of the new law that allowed this deduction they could have programmed it correctly. The wording for this deduction is as follows:

The CARES Act permits an eligible individual to claim an above-the-line deduction of up
to $300 for qualified charitable contributions made during the 2020 tax year. This means
that for taxpayers who do not itemize, the $300 deduction is in addition to the standard
deduction. The deduction is limited to $300 for single, HOH, QW, or MFJ filing statuses,
and $150 for MFS.

I was answered with what I considered was a smug response from a Rachel from support which is stated verbatim as:

"This unexpected behavior has been determined to be working as designed. The program will optimize to produce the most beneficial deduction."

Well this response is wrong in all ways as they force the standard deduction for Kentucky which clearly does NOT produce the most beneficial deduction when itemized deductions are greater than the standard. Furthermore, they programmed this incorrectly as I believe they took the easy way out.

This should have been an if then or question and should have been programmed that way. If the taxpayer doesn't itemize on Schedule A on the federal and has contributions then contributions up to $300 should be taken as an above the line contribution. Just look at the wording above.

Why should we check a button to basically force the standard deduction which for some inexplicable reason forces that standard deduction on the state return in order to get the $300 above line deduction?

I can tell you for a fact that Drake does this correctly, it automatically takes the contribution to line 10b of the 1040 without you having to check a box to do this and it also does not force the standard deduction on the state return.  Tax Slayer also computes this correctly and does not force the standard deduction on the state return as well.

I am truly disappointed that Lacerte's tech rep's or programmers will not address this issue when it is clearly not in concert with the states tax law and it is not as Rachel said "will optimize to produce the most beneficial deduction", it clearly does not!