From 8615 is for the "kiddie tax," which calculates the tax on your investment income over $2,100 at your parent's tax rate. Obviously, in order to calculate the tax at your parent's rate, information from your parent's tax return is needed. Line 6 of Form 8615 is the taxable income from your parent's tax return.
It sounds like you are getting this error when TurboTax is checking your return for errors. You may have skipped the Child's Income topic in the TurboTax interview. If so, the error check is going to ask for all the information that you should have entered in the interview, one item at a time. You should go back to the Child's Income topic and go through the questions and answers. Here's how to get to that topic.
- Click the Federal Taxes tab.
- Click Wages & Income.
- Click "I'll choose what I work on" or "Jump to a full list."
- On the screen "Your 2016 Income Summary," scroll all the way down to the bottom, to the "Less Common Income" section.
- Under "Less Common Income," click the Start, Update, or Revisit button for "Child's Income (Under Age 24)."
The tax at your parent's rate is commonly called "kiddie tax" from the days when it only applied to children under 14. The age limit has been raised to where it can apply to adult children who are still in school, but the name has stuck.
You are subject to the kiddie tax if you have investment income (unearned income) of more than $2,100, you are not filing a joint return, and any one of the following is true.
- You were under 18 at the end of 2016.
- You were 18 at the end of 2016 and your earned income (from working) is not more than half of your total support for the year.
- You were under 24 at the end of 2016, you were a full-time student, and your earned income (from working) is not more than half of your total support for the year.
