I finished my individual joint tax return using TurboTax Online this morning and submitted it to the IRS via e-file. To make a long story short, the IRS rejected my return five times before I figured out how to get it accepted. I want to share what I learned from this experience to possibly enable others to avoid the consternation I went through on this.
I used TurboTax for a number of years including 2024 and this is the first year that I've used TurboTax Online. For the IRS to accept a return, it needs to match the 2025 return to a matching 2024 return to verify the identity of whoever is filing the new return. If it can't find a match, it will reject the new return. It uses the 2024 Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) to match the identities of the people filing the 2025 return.
Every time I filed the return it was rejected because it said it couldn't find a match for the AGI on the 2024 return. In fact, the AGI I used to find a match for the new return was exactly the same as the AGI on my 2024 return, so there was no reason that the new return should have been rejected, but the IRS uses a lot of other data including driver's license information to match the 2024 return to verify the identity of whoever is filing the new return.
The first (4) times, I submitted the return and it was rejected, I tried tweaking all kinds of stuff in the identifying information on the new return, nothing worked, and the return was rejected each time. Finally, I found a solution that worked. Go to the irs.gov website and request an IP PIN for everyone included in the return. An IP PIN is used by the IRS in addition to other data to positively identify people. I added an IP PIN for both my wife and I to the return before I refiled it and it was accepted!
I hope this might prevent others from having to go through the consternation I had to go through to figure this out!
