A Q about flexable spending accounts and taxes

[slsurface]

Last year I started two flexible spending accounts with my workplace. One was for daycare expenses and the other for medical expenses. All in all, I saved around $5000 in those accounts that went un-taxed.

My question pertains to the childcare tax credit on federal taxes. Does anyone know if I can still claim this credit if I used a FSA for daycare expenses? I do my own taxes because I cannot afford to hire someone...plus we are usually not lucky enough to have a big fat return, so it's not worth it to pay someone to do it either. I would greatly appreciate any advice from all those knowledgeable about such things! TIA!

[mnnice]

I'll preface by saying I'm not any sort of tax profession, but I'm pretty sure that you can't "double dip". If you have child care expensive beyond what you flexed you can use childcare tax credit.

I've never had my taxes professionally done, but no way would I go back to paper returns. Tax Act works really well for us and is free and your data is saved from year to year. DH spend a fraction of the time he used to in getting our taxes done compared to the old paper forms.

[sunflower.mama]

Yes - it's either / or. The childcare credit is available for people who don't have access to a Dependant Care Flexible Spending Account. And if you max out your dependant care account - not sure what the limit is - you can't then use the childcare credit on top of it. Both have pretty low limits as I recall, relative to what most people spend on childcare.
Are you using Turbo Tax? It's free for federal, and it would automatically calculate what you can do. If you are doing it by hand, you can google the tax act for specifics.