Extended discussion with TurboTax Tax Expert.
1. TurboTax should recognize disaster declarations and incorporate them in its calculations.
2. But, TurboTax is not recognizing the winter storm disaster declaration for specified California counties, 2022/2023 (which set the deadline for all tax payments, IRS and California, to 16 October 2023).
3. Consequently, TurboTax calculates a late (under) payment penalty for estimated taxes paid before the October 2023 deadline. That is, the payments were not late, but TurboTax assumes they were late.
4. For federal taxes, work-around is as above: let IRS calculate the penalty. Since the IRS knows there was no late payment, there will be no penalty for late (under) payment.
5. For California taxes, there is no similar option to let the Franchise Tax Board calculate the penalty. My work-around: request a waiver of the penalty. That works, but that should not be necessary.
6. An alternative work-around: change the payment dates for estimated taxes to the expected dates earlier in the year. That is, tell TurboTax all payments were made on time. Technically incorrect to say that payments made in October were made in April or other earlier months, but, I suppose ethically honest, since taxes were paid on time. TurboTax does not submit the payment worksheet with the federal and state returns.
7. The Tax Expert agrees: not satisfactory . . . but workable.
