I live in Colorado and when I filed my tax return TABOR credit was not available. Do I need to amend my return or will CO apply the credit automatically?

[BillM223]

Colorado says on the Tabor website that you can get the TABOR refund only by filing a Colorado return (DR 0104). See TABOR

Note that Colorado did not start accepting CO returns before the the TABOR was available. I am concerned that because you did not see the refund on your 2023, you missed the fact that TurboTax did not add the TABOR refund to your return because you did not go to the very end of the Colorado interview.

There are two screens near the end of the state interview.

Navigate towards the end of the state interview to the screen with the heading, "A Few Things Before We Wrap Your State Taxes", scroll down to "Other Situations", then click on Start or Revisit for "Sales Tax Refund".

There are two questions: one on number of days incarcerated and the other on your residency (from memory). You must pass through both of these screens to get the TABOR refund.

You might call the Colorado Department of Revenue to confirm if you need to file an amended state return. If so, come back to the Community and ask how to do an amended state return.

[LNSCO]

I don't believe that the answer by 'employee' actually answered the question as expected. The answer seemed to be 'you need to file amended tax return (104X)' because it's said very clear on the website of Colorado Department of Revenue that you need to claim it, unlike the tax credit of another year.

I have no information how TurboTax updated TABOR at what time and whether or not it is aligned with the time when CO department of Revenue started to accepte tax return. But it would be more user-friendly if there was a note such as a pop-up window reminding users about TABOR after TurboTax started to implement it. It would be much better if all the users of TurboTax for Colorado received an email after they filed CO 104, considering the nature of the issue.

Another key question here is why the software (I am refering to TurboTax) fails to alarm in the final check/test if users already claimed full-year recidency of Colorado at the very beginning but missed one or two steps in the interview on TABOR that conflicts each other with the claim for full-year recidency. If you look at 104 for Colorado itself, it simply and explicitly says something like enter $800 for each of joined filer if you are 18 year old (or older) full-year recident of Colorado in 2023. The software should be able to check ages of the person who files tax return, as well, for the claim above. 

The software should guide users through minimizing user errors based on all the collected information in the software by alarming potential issues and asking for review.

Unfortunately, the result is just opposite. I wouldn't make such a mistake if I filed CO 104 by hand in regarding of this item.

[BillM223]

Colorado was making changes to TABOR up until nearly the end of the year:

"Nov. 17 - Nov. 20, 2023 a special session of the 74th General Assembly was held in Colorado, which t...."

As a former tax programmer (not with TurboTax), I can tell you how hard it is to get the next year ready to do the return right, much less add features which may admittedly be nice.

The history of the Covid era when Congress and states were making changes as late as FEBRUARY with the consequent confusion and delays (what I called "moving the goalposts" at the time) provided ample examples of how late legislation prevents writing software the way you would like.

"The software should be able to check ages of the person who files tax return, as well, for the claim above."

Actually since I answered a lot of TABOR questions this season, I thought it did check the age before asking the two questions, but I have just rerun the test, and I see that it doesn't at the moment. But there are umpty-bumpty places in TurboTax where users complain that they can't find questions when it turns out that they aren't eligible for the feature anyway. So TurboTax does this checking for eligibility a lot.

Again, I would attribute this to the late changes in CO law relating to TABOR rather than a policy failure. I would hope that next year that they would have added this check back in.

[LNSCO]

The point here is not about how difficult to develop a piece of software for tax return. Rather, it's about how to make it better as it could be. I would rather to think what we could have done for this year's version. Wishing next year's version of Turbotax better without knowing today's issues would very likely to end up at the same point of this year, unfortunately.