The CD version has more features than the online download version – and these features are necessary if you’re trying to report your day trading business as part of the Home Office deduction in TurboTax. In TurboTax, the Home Office deduction section doesn’t “see” the capital gains/losses that you reported on Schedule D (from Form 8949). And you can’t just add your capital gains/loss again to the Home Office section in TurboTax because it’s already reported on Schedule D – which means you’d be reporting it twice on the same tax return.
…. So, you have to switch to “forms” mode on the TurboTax CD and manually write in the capital gains on Form 8829’s “line 8 worksheet.” Once you do that, the Home Office section recognizes the gain. …. But you can’t access this form’s worksheet using the online download version of TurboTax. It’s only available on the CD version. ..
Now, I don’t know if this has changed in the 2024 TurboTax version – and added this feature to the download version. But I know it wasn’t in the download version in 2022.
There are other extra features as well in the CD version – it’s just better overall.
