Why did TurboTax not catch the filing mistake that's cost me thousands in return? Now I have to correct the mistakes from the last 5 years. Will they fix it or I myself ?

[Whitnic1312]

I was military so I know they’ve “helped” file millions through their services. Which is why I was confused. I was never sure why I was owing in federal and the only explanation TurboTax gave was I had too much money in my tsp. Which forced me to remove over $6k from tsp. I didn’t understand no one else was having this issue I knew. Military financial didn’t know. I had to see a financial expert outside and after showing them the screenshots from TurboTax . They were able to figure it out. I was even paying for the professional services through TurboTax and they never corrected the mistake just would take hundreds of dollars and I was being forced to owe the IRS. I spoke with someone on the phone with TurboTax and all they said was yeah you can go back and amend them through TurboTax. That’s all they offered though and I thought they would fix them since It was overlooked by them. Are they going to charge me after correcting them on my own? Am I going to receive my full refund from all previous years or get my money back from TurboTax?

[fanfare]

If you know what the error was, write that up in Form 1040-X Explanation.

start with the earliest year that has a problem.

File each 1040-X separately with a note in Explanation detailing how many total years you will be amending

@Whitnic1312 

[SteamTrain]

@Whitnic1312 

You do understand what you did though...do you not?

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Not that I know for sure, but I suspect that you double-entered your TSP contributions, both with your W-2 data entry , and a second time as IRA or ROTH IRA contributions???

BUT

Your TSP contributions are only entered as a part of your W-2 entries in the TTX software, and nowhere else.

A TSP contribution is NOT an IRA or ROTH IRA contribution, and is not entered a second time when the software asks about "IRA" or "Roth IRA" contributions.  They are just not the same thing...and are named differently too.

_______________________

Yes, others sometimes make the same mistake.  The TSP contributions can also be done by other US Govt employees, not just Military.   And the TSP is exactly equivalent to the 401k plans available to civilian companies issuing W-2 forms, and some of them will make the same mistake this year too.  I suspect it may be less than 1 in 1,000-10,000 people that may make that mistake very year, but that can still add up.

The entry area where it is done by a few folks, accidentally, it clearly states that is for IRA....or Roth IRA contributions

....But TTX could certainly help by adding some BOLD text in that entry area to indicate that TSP-401k-403b-457 account contributions, that are entered with your W-2 data, are NOT to be entered as IRA/Roth IRA contributions.