Thanks for the comment.
It is unfortunate that Intuit applications people and tech support have not fixed the bug (which was identified last year) , or at a minimum, provided a job aide or guidance to their customer service personnel to help users. Finding a clunky workaround is fine, but at the price that Intuit charges for the TurboTax software I think we consumers deserve better. This was my first time having to enter data for pension income for myself, and I recognized immediately that the tool was not calculating and applying the exclusions correctly (it only took a few mouse clicks to the NYS Tax & Finance reference material to confirm that).
Adding to the annoyance, I was told that I might have to "upgrade" to their TurboTax LIVE (i.e.; pay more $) for the privilege of having my call responded to by someone with more experience and expertise. That would be bogus as I wasn't seeking "tax advice" I was just trying to point out/resolve an obvious glitch in the software. I was told to call back in a few weeks to see if they decided do do anything to resolve the bug.
The problem is obviously in the forced-choice selections in the Federal income pages as they pertain to pension and annuity exclusions for NYS government retirees, and obviously the error gets carried forward in to NYS income tax package. Bottom line they should just fix the bug or at least give us a timeframe for correcting it. I've been a loyal user of TurboTax for many years, and have used it for doing taxes of other people in my family and recommend it to everyone I know. This was a big turn- off for me and frankly very poor tech support and customer relations -- so I've decided to use someone else software this year. Sorry TurboTax.
