I have a 1099-DIV for a joint investment account which was split 50/50 in 2024 between me and my ex-wife pursuant to divorce. The tax burden was to be split evenly. I know how to do the nominee process to claim half the income, theoretically. But it isn’t working in TurboTax! Here is why…
My 1099-DIV has income in 4 different boxes: 1a, 1b, 2a, and 5. When I enter all 4 boxes as one 1099 in TurboTax, which would be normal, I check the box that I need to make an adjustment as nominee. So far so good, except that then TurboTax only gives me one box to enter an adjusted amount!
I don’t know what adjustment amount to enter, because those boxes are taxed differently. It’s not as simple as just adding all four boxes together and dividing by half.
So, one TT phone rep told me, as a workaround, to create 4 different 1099s in TurboTax - one for each of the 4 boxes. And that worked until I scanned my return for errors, and TT freaked out and found “errors” because of the artificial/divided 1099 entries showing 0 income in box 1a and positive income in box 1b. That’s obviously impossible, and TT doesn’t understand I was just using a workaround (suggested by a TT rep).
TT won’t let me file until those “errors” are corrected.
I think I might be able to fix this if I do a 1099 for box 1a and 1b together. But what is the calculation to do a 50% adjustment to the tax burden if I do that?
