First of all, I want to personally thank all of you for these posts. For real. Your comments and questions have given me a better understanding of this issue. Like many of you, I have used Turbotax for many years. Like many of you I was shocked to receive the "Federal return rejected" message. Partly because of the cryptic "explanation" from Turbotax, my first thought was that I had screwed up... and I spent WAY too much time going over my return in great detail. To the best of my ability, the return was 100 percent accurate and honest. What was "new" to my return was Form 8960. I am not a tax expert but my layman take on this form is that it is for passive types of income when the 125/250k thresholds are met. This year we were required to take Required Minimum Distributions and that pushed us over the threshold and we had some dividend and interest income. What DIDN'T look right to me was that my wife's "active" consulting income was reported on 4a and then zeroed out on 4b. Hmmmmm....
I'm originally from the Midwest and I have an old school mindset. I believe that "good business" means "good communication with customers" and Turbotax has failed us in this regard. How much different might it have been if the original rejection notice had been worded more like this: "Business Rules F8960-019-04 and F8960-003 may cause returns to erroneously reject. These business rules need to be modified to reflect the updates to the Instructions for Form 8960 (Tax Year 2022) regarding the Specific Instructions for Line 4a to include Schedule C (Form 1040) amounts reported on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 3 and Form 1041, line 3. This is not your fault. We are communicating with the IRS and we anticipate a fix in the near future. We will keep you posted in the interim and provide you with guidance on when and how to refile your return. We are sincerely sorry for this inconvenience and we value your business. In the interim, we would advise you not to refile until you have received further direction from us."
By now, we should have received one or more updates from Turbotax and we haven't. Turbotax may not be ultimately responsible for problems with Form 8960 but TT IS responsible for the way it communicates to its customers. I'm not impressed... And speaking of communications, can any of you share with me HOW you can contact Turbotax staff by phone or text-chat? I can't find that contact information anywhere.
OK... so thank you for letting me vent. I am going to take another slow sip of bourbon, enjoy the semi-warm California sunshine, and await further instructions from... someone.
Sail on...
