Retirement tax questions

1. Your disability pay is probably not earned income, since you aren't paying FICA on it, but it is considered "compensation" for purposes of making IRA contributions.  Compensation (for IRA) is not always the same as earned income.   For the IRA, compensation is your box 1 wages (except you have to subtract any box 11 payments from non-qualified plans.)

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590a#en_US_2021_publink1000230355

 

3. Generally speaking, disability pay is "earned income" and subject to FICA for the first 6 months after you become disabled, and is unearned income after that.  There are some exceptions and wrinkles. 

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/n-15-06.pdf

 

If you are within the first 6 months, your employer or the insurer should have taken care of this automatically, you should call them and ask for a corrected W-2. There is a way to pay this yourself but it would be better for the insurer to fix it. 

 

2. A life insurance policy in excess of $50,000 is considered part of your taxable wages.  Since you aren't actually working, your employer can't collect the FICA and medicare taxes owed.  Turbotax should recognize that you owe these taxes and put them on schedule 2 line 13 automatically.  Just enter the W-2 as written.