My wife receives a minimal Social Security benefit. It is not enough to cover the Medicare Part B premium. The problem for 2021 is that no SSA-1099 was received! For 2020, it was simple: the SSA-1099 gave the yearly amount of her benefit and then showed that all of it was deducted for the Part B premium. We could enter that into TurboTax on the Social Security Benefits Worksheet. We paid the balance out-of-pocket, and added that to our itemized deductions.
But with no SSA-1099, there is no way to enter the info for the benefit going to the Part B premium. I tried looking at the issue two different ways, and it made a $300 difference in the size of our refund:
If I pretend that we received an SSA-1099, and enter the total benefit amount and then deduct the same amount as a premium, then the refund we are otherwise entitled to is about $300 less than if I simply treat the amount paid for Part B Medicare as an additional Medical cost on Schedule A. But if we do the latter, that seems wrong, because we would not be reporting the Social Security Income that paid for the premium. Yet, if we report the income (minus the premium, so a net of zero), can we legally do so when we never received an SSA-1099?
On the other hand, if we don't enter the benefit amount, then for itemization, can we deduct the full premium actually paid (my wife's full benefit plus out-of-pocket, or just the out-of-pocket part (even though her benefit amount is paying the bulk of the Part B premium)?
I think the $300 difference is because my wife's benefit amount (from the theoretical SSA-1099) is treated as income to her (even though offset by the premium paid from it).
Bottom line: how should her benefit be treated if there is no SSA-1099? We've spoken with both Social Security and Medicare, and all they can say is that she didn't receive any money in 2021--but they do acknowledge that her benefit was and is still being used to pay for Part B, and that she received the 5.9% COLA for 2022.
Any thoughts on our dilemma?
