Senior Deduction phase out on form 1-A.

Forum|Forum|5 months ago
February 11, 2026
4 replies
47 views

MFJ and both over 65 with income of $180k and subject to the phase out. However Turbo Tax desk top version is incorrectly calculating the phase out amount by doubling the phase out amount. I've seen where others have reported the issue but I don't see confirmation by Intuit that it's a known issue or any estimate of when to expect correction.

rjs

Level 15

The calculation in TurboTax is correct. The phaseout applies separately to each spouse on a joint return. Look at Part V of Schedule 1-A. TurboTax is following the IRS instructions for Schedule 1-A.

terriheidAuthor

Level 2

Appreciate replies but still not understanding. Calc is based off joint gross income and the 150k max is based off joint income and the 6% calc is based on total joint but then that result is applied on each taxpayer which seems to double penalize, what am I missing?

rjs

Level 15

The only thing you're missing is that it's not a penalty. That's the way the law requires the calculation to be done. The phaseout applies separately to each spouse. Just look at Schedule 1-A and follow the steps in Part V.

VolvoGirl

Level 15

It is phased out for EACH spouse. Fill out Sch 1-A yourself and see. It's pretty easy. Then why would they even have 2 lines 36a and 36b for spouse on Schedule 1-A? And the max for Joint is 250,000 and not double for Single (350,000).

IRS Schedule 1-A
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040s1a.pdf

See IRS instructions for 1040 line 110
https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf

VolvoGirl

Level 15

@terriheid I entered 180,000 into my spreadsheet for you. Is t his what you got?

Ruth7680

Level 2

I saw the same problem on our married filing jointly taxes. It's not a Turbo Tax problem, it's an error on the IRS form by whoever designed the form, part V. I looked up the 1-A form online at IRS.gov to see if they caught the error in the form and had an updated form. The form was the same. It is an error, or a deliberate issue by the IRS/government which essentially takes money away from married filing jointly couples. It uses the combined income threshold to calculate the 6% reduction per $1,000 of income over the threshold of $150,000. But then it applies the same reduction separately to each married spouse. That increases the reduction to 12% per $1,000 of COMBINED income over $150,000. They should have applied the reduction amount from COMBINED INCOME to the COMBINED $12,000 deduction starting point. To compare, if you take half of the combined income, calculate the 6% reduction, then apply it to the $6000 deduction for only one spouse (as though you were filing separately) , you would see that their reduction is half of the amount of the 6% reduction calculation of the amount over $150,000, but on the married filing jointly, the 6% is doubled by applying it twice, separately to each spouse. If you compare the two scenarios, by applying the reductions separately to each spouse, the filing separately is actually 25% of the combined reduction to married couples filing jointly. I hope that makes sense the way I explained it. It's definitely a marriage penalty that no one is talking about and I couldn't find it anywhere on any online searches. If you think about how much each couple could be loosing, then multiply it by the number of seniors it would affect across the United States, that is a lot of money taken away from seniors. Is it intentional or someone's mistake in the design and application of he OBBB? Who knows, but it is wrong!