I am in the same boat. Turbo Tax needs to do a better job with going through this Form - particularly if this is from the federal Office of Personnel Management (CSA Form 1099R) - for federal retirees. Box 2a says "Unknown" - but when entering data into Turbo Tax,, you cannot enter that word (or any letters) for Box 2a - you can only enter numbers - and if you leave it blank, you then come up with the conclusion and a warning note when you finish entering everything else for the form, that you meant "0" and that NONE of the distribution is taxable, and a cautionary question do you want to change this. Turbo Tax and I know that this is not probably true. In my case I have used up all my Total Employee Contributions (Box 9B) over the years, so I presume I should have entered the entire amount of the gross distributions (Box 1), into Box 2a, despite that number not entered on the CSA-Form1099R issued to me. Over the years Turbo Tax calculated the taxable portion using the simplified method when the taxable portion was "Unknown" so it would seem that Turbo Tax should carry over the entire Box 2a amount into Box 2b, since it has been all taxable for some years now. Or, Turbo Tax should work with OPM to get them to enter the entire amount into 2b, since OPM knows all the employee contributions have been distributed.
