I forgot to disclose that info: My business income on line 12 is about $74117.  I see the $13178 on line 1 and $6925 on line 4 of Schedule A.
I tried something: If I add $11000 additional income anywhere on 1040, then I get the full $13776 premium deduction on line 29. This is very strange! Turbotax is not allowing the AGI to fall below the poverty threshold (about $80400). This is why it is limiting the deduction on line 29. This is how I know Turbotax is not calculation line 29 correctly.

@TaxGuyBill are you our 1095A expert?

I do know that when you are bordering the 400% Poverty Level, TurboTax is screwy with the calculations and you may need to do it manually.

Does your tax return have Form 8962 (or you may need to look at the "all worksheets" to see it)?  What is on Lines 1, 3 and 5?  What about Lines 24-29?

Here is the info on 8962:
Line 1 - $83370
Line 3 - $83370
Line 4 - $20160
Line 5 - 401%
Line 6 - 'Yes'
Line 25 and 26 are zero. All other parts of the 8962 are blanks.
I know I should not qualify for Premium Tax Credits based on my AGI ($83370). However, I should be able to deduct the total premiums from my Business income on line 29 of the 1040 to get some tax reduction based on my tax bracket. Turbo tax is not able to get me this tax relief. I am estimating it to be around $2000 (assuming 15% tax bracket). I guess I am the only one who discovered this issue with Turbotax. So unfortunate!

No, many others have found the problem that the software has when you border the 400% mark.

However, you are wrong about qualifying for the Premium Tax Credit.  The problem is the when you border the 400% mark, TurboTax does not do things correctly (as you've seen).  Interestingly, in my test scenario it works (but I don't have some of your exact numbers, so that could be why.

What is your AGI (Line 3 of Form 8962) if you UNLINK the 1095-A (so the health insurance does not show up on Line 29 at all)?

I can give you a possible work-around, or you could do the exact numbers manually (which is rather gruesome).  Or another possible 'easy' fix would be to contribute about $3500 to a Traditional IRA (which may get you under the 400% border).

My AGI is $83370 (about $3000 above the border), so I don't qualify for the premium tax credit. I would love to hear your work-around. Are we in agreement that Turbo tax is wrong when AGI is within several thousand dollars of the border line amount? Based on a test a did, the AGI needs to be $13776 over the border line amount in order Turbotax to put the correct premium deduction deduction ($13776) on line 29. Turbo guys are claiming that the calculations are correct.

Yes, TurboTax is often wrong when you are bordering the 400% mark (or 100% mark).

That is why I also mentioned the 'easy' fix would be to contribute $3500 to a Traditional IRA, as that would get you under the 400% mark, and TurboTax may do the calculation correctly.  Try doing that in TurboTax and see what the results are.  Assuming it works, you will like the results.  🙂


So your AGI without ANYTHING on Line 29 is $83,370?

As long as I'm testing it, what is the SLCSP on your 1095-A?  Are all months the same?   Column is $1148 per month?


The next day-and-a-half are rather busy, so if I don't have a chance to respond right away, that doesn't mean I've forgotten about you.

Thanks for trying to help. I know all about the deductions to reduce the AGI (HSA, IRA, 401K, Tuition). I am working with a simplified return. My goal is to get Turbo guys to admit there is a problem and I would like to learn about a work-around to get the premium to show on line 29.
I have an AGI of $83370 and I have $598 on line 29 as premium deduction. On 1095-A the Column A is 1148 for all months and Column B is $1665 all months.

It is now March 2018 and I have spent dozens of hours working by myself and with several "experts" from TT on a similar issue. I am self employed and have 2 1095-As (my wife and I) and my AGI before entering anything for Health Insurance Premiums is about $3000 below the 400% threshold so there should be no problem getting PTCs. When I enter the first 1095-A, all is well; the amount that it allows for the PTC is subtracted from the total premiums and the remainder is on Schedule 1, Line 29 as it is supposed to be. When I enter the second 1095-A, TT gives me 100% in PTC ($25,000) AND it forces me to take a $25,000 deduction on Line 29. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know that is wrong but one of the "experts" said to simply file the return and because of their guarantee, TT will pay the interest and penalties that I will be charged from taking the $25k deduction that I'm not entitled to. The reason that I get total reimbursement for all premiums is that it the entire amount is deducted from my AGI when only the portion that is not given back in credits should be duducted. The problem with TT is that you get a new "expert" each time that spends hours while you are on the phone reviewing the notes from the past conversations. They start out saying that we will have it resolved before we hang up and then several hours later, they finally hang up because there is no answer (it's an ongoing glitch) and they say that they will call back or send a resolution in the email but they never call back or the email resolution is wrong but you are not allowed to prove it because it is a "No-Reply" email. The problem is that they work on it until they finally realize that they don't know or there really is no answer and then they dump you. I should also say that I made too much to qualify for PTCs in 2017 so it wasn't a problem but I tested the 2017 version and it has the same problem. My problem is rare so they will never admit that there is a problem and it will never be fixed.

Wow! I guess they still didn't fix that problem after all this time. It is unfortunate that you have to deal with it. This year I am not qualified for the credits, so I have to return $18,000+ back. I didn't have to deal with the TT bug this year (fortunately or unfortunately).

Thank you for your comment. I need to repay all of it back as well, so my question is now: can I put the repayment amount on Line 29 - self employed health insurance deduction. I think I can. Can you?

Yes, you can put all of the Repayment (plus what you already paid through out the year) on Line 29 assuming there is enough Business Income to support the deduction: Make sure sum of all the deductions on lines 27, 28 and 29 is NOT greater than the Business Income on line 12. In my case, I have Maximum 401K Contribution on line 28, so I am able to deduct only a portion of the Repayment on line 29.  Sometimes TT is not able to do this correctly! I don't know when and why. The US tax code is over 70,000 pages!  I don't want to be too harsh on TT about bugs, but something common like Health Insurance and Self Employment interaction should be one of the things that TT has to do correctly.

The problem is that when there is a bug, no one from TT wants to be the one to officially say so. They will suggest a resolution that is wrong or in my case suggest that you submit the return knowing that it's wrong and then most likely putting in their notes that they believe the calculations are correct so they can kick the can down the road to next year. Or they will promise to do more research on it and call you back and then they don't (I assume because they give up and don't want to admit it). They will tell you that you don't have to worry because their guarantee will pay any late fees or penalties but I'm just not going to submit a return that says that I get 100% PTCs AND I get to deduct the credits from my income on line 29 (this takes my AGI down $25,000 lower than it should be which is why I get 100% PTCs in the first place when I should really only get PTCs for a percentage of my total premiums). It would be very nice if I could deduct a credit from my income but a kid in middle school would know that's not right. Deduct a credit from your income? Absurd! I also wonder if another problem is that the ones who write the code for the software know very little about complicated and rare tax situations like mine (2 1095-A's for self-employed). What they really need is to have a team of "tax experts" who can also write the software code but there probably aren't 5 such people in the United States. The one thing that they really need to do is to allow communication with the same person until the customer agrees that the problem has been resolved. Each time you are forced to start all over with someone not familiar with your case, they have to review all of the mounting notes from previous "experts", and like gossip, it loses a lot in the translation from one person to the next. Then, once they finally understand the problem, you have to sit on the phone for hours while they try to do the same things that you and the previous "experts" on your case have already spent dozens of hours doing (review over 100 pages of IRS publications over and over, review the TT community posts like these from people with similar problems, etc). I have actually never made posts like these but I am so frustrated and angry that I am hoping that they will finally admit that there is a problem and I might help others who are struggling with this same problem to realize that there are no "experts" that can help you with a fatal glitch like this that they will never admit to.

Meanwhile, TT will continue to get great reviews because the masses do not have such problems and do not stumble upon such glitches that never get fixed because not enough people have the problem. I assume that they do have to do a lot of re-writes just by looking at all of the updates that supposedly fix glitches but if the problem is rare they will kick the can down the road. One other secret that I will let you all in on. For those of you with only one 1095-A where TT has worked for you, or worked "close enough" you will most likely notice that your PTCs plus your allowed deduction on line 29 do not add up to the total amount of premiums as it should. This is because TT only does one iteration on your data. This is allowed by the IRS but doing only one iteration usually works out in the favor of the IRS so when they will guarantee that they save you the most you should challenge them on this issue. If you call the expert and ask them how many iterations does TT do, my guess is they won't know what you are talking about until they go and read up on how to calculated PTCs using 1 to 3 iterations and even then, they probably will not be able to figure out that TT only does one iteration.

Thank you SO MUCH for your detailed and time consuming response. It is very much appreciated. I assumed that I could put the entire repayment on Line 29 but I was not sure. Now I am at ease on this matter. I have to admit - I am doing my taxes manually without any software, on paper. This year I was going for the first time to try TT but I read about this problem, and decided against it. Since I haven't made the contribution yet to my 401K on Line 28, I simply reduced 401K  by the repayment amount, so not to exceed the business income on Line 12.
Would you please be so kind to answer one more question if you know? On Form 4562 Depreciation...in the top right corner there is an entry that needs to be filled  - Identifying number. I read and reread the instructions for this form, googled this question - nothing. At first I thought it was the code number for the type of business, then I decided it must be SSN but whose: my husband's since this is a joint return and he is primary or mine because this depreciation deduction goes on Schedule C for my small business? One would think that IRS instructions  should be clear -  it will take just a couple of words to solve.
Thank you in advance for your time.

Would you mind explaining "...TT only does one iteration on your data."? I'm not familiar with how that works.