@johnf3 wrote:
I just ran into the same problem. If the answer is as simple as this, why does Turbo Tax allow the return to be efiled? They should simply say that you can't efile a return for a deceased taxpayer.
Plus it says elsewhere in this community (can't figure out how to link here) that a return for a decease taxpayer can be efiled.
So I am in the same situation as the OP. The return was rejected even though I put in the correct AGI.
Although I notice that the OP said there was no place to enter the spouse's information. That makes sense since they filed jointly in 2018. My wife and I filed married filing separately in 2018 and I'm filing jointly for 2019. Turbo tax did ask for each of our 2018 AGIs separately.
There is nothing in policy that prevents e-filing as such, it just seems to be the case the the social security administration (which is where the IRS gets their SSN/name/DOB database) is becoming more aggressive about blocking the SSNs of deceased people. This is probably to your ultimate benefit although it may be frustrating in the short term.
My main reason for suspecting this is that, if you use the same Turbotax account from year to year, the program automatically adds the e-filing PINS for both spouses, and I have only seen this problem reported for the deceased spouse, and not for the living spouse or in couples with both spouses alive.
Now of course, if a spouse died in 2018, the taxpayer can;'t file a joint return in 2019 regardless of SSN block or not. They would file single, or head of household, or qualifying widow(er), but not joint. I don't notice that happening but it's possible, then its the taxpayer error. The other tricky thing about this forum is that it was created this year and all the posts from the old forum were migrated in May and June and ended up with 2019 dates, even if they were originally years older, so posts dated May and June 2019 can contain out of date information.
