We are filing MFS, California residents. I'm using TT Premier, Desktop for Mac.
The problem: We both have 1099-INT and 1099-DIV forms. I imported the data from our brokerage into the respective separate TT returns. I also have W-2 and 1099-B income (cap gains). These were imported in my return only. I calculated an AGI amount we need to arrive at since CA is a community property state (add both AGIs, divide by 2 and determine the plus/minus amount to enter on the Community Property Income Adjustments page). This way I was able to get our AGIs to match. I would've expected that TT will total (separately) our dividend, interest, wages and capital gains, then split equally for the purposes of determining our due taxes. Surprisingly, that's NOT the case. TT kept everything separately (form 8958) and calculated vastly different amounts of tax on our MFS returns. If everything is split 50:50, I expect that taxes to be the same too... Reverse-engineering a bit, it seems like TT is treating the adjustment income which we added to the return with lower original AGI as general income... and taxing it that way instead at the preferential rates for cap gains (for example).
How can I fix this? I spoke with Cust Support multiple times and they weren't able to help. Splitting the various amounts by sources of income in TT doesn't help. There's a note in the app stating that changes on those pages (community property related) won't affect the tax calculations and the listings are for informational purposes only. I purchased the TT desktop app specifically to be able to file MFS :-(.
