TurboTax is still having issues with California Capital Loss Carryovers, and they have been having serious issues with this topic for many years. For Tax Year 2020, I had losses in some mutual funds I sold, and reported them in TurboTax Home & Business, then. Now, while preparing my returns using 2021 TurboTax Home & Business (the federal module), I get to a page where it says “Let’s get some info from your 2020 tax return”, and directs the user to “look at your California Form 540, Schedule D and enter your capital loss carryover, if any, as a positive amount.” First of all, why should the user need to go off looking for (and manually calculating) this amount, when it was TurboTax that computed it, and documented it the previous year? Nevertheless, when looking at 2020 California Schedule D, it is not readily apparent what the carryover loss is for carrying over to 2021 (e.g., it is not explicitly stated, but must be figured out - again). After some time, I finally found the amount by looking at the “records” file I saved from the 2020 TurboTax returns, specifically on Line 8 of the “California Capital Loss Carryover Worksheet” (NOT to be confused with the “Carryover Worksheet”). When I found the correct amount on the worksheet, I then looked for it on the California Schedule D, and this amount was NOT there (i.e., TurboTax gave the incorrect location for it). As if that is not enough, on this same page where TurboTax says “Let’s get some info from your 2020 tax return”, it asks the User to verify an amount from "Form 1040, Line 11b"; however, there is no Line 11b on the 2020 Form 1040 (it should be Line 15)!
My complaints about TurboTax's inability to get California Capital Carryover Losses go back several years. One of the problems before was that if a User followed the directions, exactly, as given by TurboTax, all of their California Capital Loss Carryovers could be promptly lost, such that they were not picked up for that year, nor for following years. The total costs to all TurboTax Users in California could have been very substantial, to say the least. After I reported this problem to TurboTax in numerous posts (now apparently deleted by TurboTax), and after much denial, they still did not correct it until a latter year, when FINALLY, a TurboTax representative acknowledged the problem. What is going on with the Quality Control department at TurboTax?
