I filed online with TurboTax for tax year 2021, and only recently realized I forgot to add education credits from my 1098-T. I amended the return with this information, triple checked everything, and submitted before the April 15 midnight deadline. I now see it was rejected. I see on the online browser that it is correctly under the 2021 tax year, saying rejected, although there is no option to amend online anymore - I have to download the program. The odd part is that the email I received mentioned logging in to:
To update your return
Simply sign in to your TurboTax account and open your 2023 amended tax return. There, you can make any adjustments necessary to successfully e-file your return.
Is the mentioning of 2023 just a typo or is there a chance this may have caused the issue and TurboTax accidentally filed it under 2023 or something?
Under "What Happened" to cause the rejection, the email states:
What happened
/Return/ReturnHeader/FilingSecurityInformation/TotalPreparationSubmissionTs - Data in the return is missing or invalid. Please double check your entries.
Does anybody understand what this is pointing to? I am assuming "SubmissionTs" refers to submission timestamp, something that sounds inconsequential, but I am not certain that is the meaning. Additionally, is there a reason why the online amend feature disappeared and I now have to use the program? I hope this won't affect my ability to submit.
Thanks.
TurboTax Online will only e-file, 2023 tax returns and amendments. If you are amending a prior year return, that is usually done through the desktop software. Online is only good for the current tax year (2023). In the amend instructions in the Online version, a download of the prior year software will be available if needed.
After downloading software for the prior year needed I'm still unable to efile
Thank you! That was my understanding initially too, so I was surprised when I saw the option to amend online. I assumed it was part of the premium/business edition that I originally purchased for 2021. I have downloaded the software and started using it, but it does not have any option for saying that my amendment was "filed and rejected".
Does the IRS usually send official communication about a rejection like this? It seems my next step would be to wait for that since the TurboTax email doesn't supply more information as to what needs fixing, and I find no errors upon checking. I am only worried that, since it is now past the deadline, submitting the amended return again will be past the deadline and they may not send the refund?
I appreciate your help!
You can not efile a prior year amended return from the Desktop program. You might be able to efile from the Online version if you get lucky. Some have but most have not.
Thank you. That seems to be correct from my experience thus far. Amendments to 2021 were e-filable from the Online version prior to the April 15 midnight deadline. I am happy to mail this amendment at this point anyway, I just need to figure out if I need to wait for communication from the IRS, or to figure out what caused the rejection so I can fix it, if anybody understands what TurboTax meant in their email by this:
/Return/ReturnHeader/FilingSecurityInformation/TotalPreparationSubmissionTs - Data in the return is missing or invalid. Please double check your entries.
Thank you all.
This is just the reject people get when they are not able to file a prior year amendment. You will just need to mail it.
Thank you for the reassurance. I read around on other posts and it seems it is indeed not supposed to be possible to file the amended return with the online version for the 2021 tax year. The error/rejection message that results is just how TurboTax's system is responding to this glitchy sort of interaction.
To clarify for future readers, this rejection is on the TurboTax side and is not a rejection from the IRS. Simply print and mail the amended return you created before. There isn't actually any "data missing or invalid" in the return necessarily.
I appreciate all commenters' help.