This issue is definitely a Turbo-Tax programming error within the Ohio part of the TurboTax Premium program.
The problem occurs when filing jointly and the primary person (the member of the Military) is an Ohio Resident stationed outside of Ohio, but the spouse is a resident of another state.
In our case, I am an Ohio Resident stationed in Texas and my spouse is a Texas resident.
Ohio does not tax military pay received by Ohio residents while stationed outside Ohio.
Apparently TurboTax is erroneously overriding my status to Non-Resident (my spouse's status), and consequently disallows deducting my Texas earnings from Ohio Income.
This even occurs if the spouse had no earnings. I tested this by temporarily deleting her W2's.
The error disappears if I change the spouse status to be an Ohio resident. I tested this.
I will be submitting my Ohio return via US Mail, and thereby by-passing the TurboTax error message. This will enable our Ohio Taxes to be ZERO for our joint return. ZERO tax for me since I am Military stationed outside Ohio, and ZERO tax for my spouse because she is a Texas resident and her Texas earnings are not taxable by Ohio (and also ZERO in Texas since Texas doesn't have a state income tax.)
!!! I called the Ohio Tax division today and they confirmed that I am handling this correctly, and that the TurboTax error message is erroneous.
REQUEST: Could one of you please escalate this TurboTax programming issue to the attention to your technical experts so that it can be corrected and a TurboTax update issued. I need to avoid my fellow military members from encountering this TurboTax issue and wasting hours trying to figure this out and potentially paying Taxes that is not their liability.
