Get your taxes done using TurboTax

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.