calculating US tax owed

Post date: 2020-07-13 07:53:37

TurboTax and the official US Tax Tables and instructions from the 1040 are giving me two different numbers from the same adjusted gross income number. What gives?

I am trying to DIY my taxes with free fillable forms; my situation is not overly complex. I have my AGI, TurboTax gives the same AGI from the same inputs so everything checks out up to line 11 of the 1040. Then you need to enter tax owed; the official instructions point you to the tax tables, but TurboTax also provides a line item "explanation of refund" and their tax owed number does not match the tax tables, it's lower. Why? Is there some more favorable but still legal way of calculating tax owed other than from the tables using the tax brackets for exact marginal dollars? It doesn't make any sense otherwise. The numbers are close but not that close, within $50

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