BillM223
Expert Alumni

Retirement tax questions

Ron_M - I answered the way I did because it sounded like the Original Poster was worried about a MA pension being taxable (I have seen some other questions on that issue).

 

OK, now that you have explained what you're up to, let's see what we can do.

 

" [It appears that Pension Distributions and 401k Rollovers both use the 1099-R Form.]"

 

Yes, they do, although a number of plan administrators doing a trustee-to-trustee rollover such as your 401(k) to IRA won't even bother to issue a 1099-R, because they figure there's no tax consequence.

 

"Form 1: Tax-Exempt Pension should not be entered directly on Form 1 for State Electronic Filing.  You should enter the information on the Federal Return, Form 1099-R and/or use the Pensions and Annuities Smart Worksheet to make any tax-exempt adjustments. "

 

This is all quite true. I think the problem here is that so far as you know, you didn't enter anything directly on MA Form 1 (did you?).

 

"Then there is a line that reads:

Tax-Exempt Pension  [with a box that has the number "0"]"

 

Is this in the Final Review or in the state review?

 

"and the number "0" is in red."

 

The red indicates that you have made an override here. 

I don't know that you did; it could have been a slip of the fingers or random cosmic radiation.

 

OK, you have tried to delete the entry in this box, right? No, the problem is that, as you realize, that you should not have anything talking about non-taxable pensions.

 

So let's try this: go to your federal interview for the 1099-Rs, delete these two (or one if only one 1099-R is the problem), then go back to the MA interview and run through it (giving TurboTax a chance to flush it out), then go back and re-enter this 1099-R, then go back to the MA interview and run through it, and see if that gets rid of the "number in red".

 

What's stopping you from filing is an override on the MA form 1, so we need to clear that.

 

@Ron_M

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