Thanks again @dmertz
For anyone out there with the same issue, it wasn’t clear to me at first, but as was pointed out TurboTax will not allow you to claim more than the maximum SEP calculation on your return, so if you had an overpayment and want to carry it forward, you still need to claim the max SEP deduction in the “catch-up” year’s filing, but only reduce your contribution by the previous year’s excess amount.
if you were to reduce your SEP deduction by the excess on your current return, then you’d still have that excess contribution. You file your return as taking the max SEP contribution (and as if you’ve contributed all of it), but you’ve already partially contributed to it “early” via the previous year’s excess payment.
The only place to reduce amounts by the excess is in the amount contributed to the SEP for the current year.
Tell TurboTax that you contributed the max to the SEP, but when contributing to the SEP, the total should be the max minus the excess from the previous year.
I hope that makes sense!
But it wasn’t obvious to me at first, so wanted to share that here for anyone else who needs this info.
