If you are like myself receiving a retirement pension from a foreign country, you won't be able to file the 1099-R form and properly transfer that information to your state tax return. Because foreign governments don't use or have the US Payer's Federal identification numbers (FIN) the 1099R forms can not be properly filed using Turbo Tax. In previous years Turbo Tax allowed taxpayers to input a generic numbers like 11-1111111 or 99-9999999, but not this year. If you report your pension on form 1040 as Other Income instead of 1099-R and you file a state tax return in a state with pension exclusion, there is a chance you'll be losing $100's or even $1000's of dollars in refunds. To get an exclusion on your state Tax return you'd have to file 1099-R on your Federal return. I spent more than 2 hours talking to the customer service, the person from customer service was very nice and tried to help with that issue, but the Tier 2 support person wasn't helpful at all. I think she didn't understand how serious this issue is to people receiving foreign pensions and filing state taxes. I suggested to provide a generic FIN for such filers like myself or provide a worksheet for state taxes so foreign pension income can be manually reported without filing a form 1099-R (if the IRS insists on using actual FINs). This is a serious issue preventing us from getting full refunds and e-filing our taxes.
Please fix this issue already!
