This inefficiency can only be explained if the current developers of TurboTax have never used this part of the program. I would hope that if one of the software designers or developers actually used the product for an extension, they would fix this nightmare and incentive to find a competitor.
This actually led me to discover the free IRS Direct File platform, https://www.irs.gov/filing/irs-direct-file-for-free, that is much, much better than last year. It also integrates with many state filings and is probably sufficient for my kids' needs. I'll probably recommend they use that next year even if I purchase TurboTax again. It eliminates the need to buy each state package. I just discovered yesterday that one needs to buy the Mac and Windows versions for each separately since we're a mixed OS family. That made it doubly expensive to review my kids' returns in TurboTax because I can't even open their TurboTax file to see the IRS portion without downloading the Intuit state upgrade. So, I'm reviewing their PDFs and having them do the data entry to fix things. And then manually filed their extensions on the IRS site. But I digress.....
I presume Intuit created the Form 8468 in TurboTax before the IRS accepted the form online, and never revisited it. I actually had a problem with the IRS a couple years ago when they said they never received my extension request that I printed from TurboTax and mailed. Of course, I couldn't prove it was mailed unlike an online submission because I didn't have to pay with the extension. Fortunately, my track record of requesting an extension for over 20 years avoided being penalized. But what unnecessary extra stress and waste of everyone's time to use mail rather than an online submission.
