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Regardless of Intuit's published data retention policies, there's really no way for regular retail customers to confirm what detail of info they're retaining, where they are retaining it, and for what length of time they're retaining it.   Also, even if Intuit customer support claims they have no access to previously transmitted returns, we should assume that their their legal department has unlimited access to any returns that their system administrators are able to locate (see the fine print quoted above).   In any case we can rightfully assume that online tax preparation exposes our tax return information to a much greater attack surface, i.e. an Internet-facing publicly accessible web site storing tax return information for at least as long as it takes a customer to prepare and transmit it.  But using a desktop product to transmit a completed return is likely something more akin to a temporary SSH session that only lasts as long as necessary to transmit to Intuit's forwarding servers.  (And hopefully Intuit's server architecture has their online preparation web server and storage completely separated from a set of store & forward servers that transmit completed returns to the relevant tax authorities -- but we can't be sure of that either...)   So the IT security guy in me (and yeah I've been involved with establishing legal holds on data with  evidentiary significance) says that the risks associated with online tax preparation should be avoided if at all possible.  TRUST NO ONE.  👁

@baldietax wrote: @M-MTax I've not seen any reference to specific timeframes, in the global privacy policy it refers to data retention requirements..... How about what data they retain? If it's simply basic PII (name, address, email, phone number(s), et al), is it that big of a deal? 

@M-MTax I've not seen any reference to specific timeframes, in the global privacy policy it refers to data retention requirements etc but I don't know where that's further documented.  I guess CA have extra rights to get whatever data they have.  But even if you can, maybe it's in some sort of e-file format anyway.   https://www.intuit.com/privacy/statement/ Data retention Unless you specifically ask us to delete your personal information, we retain your personal information as long as it is necessary to comply with our data retention requirements and provide you with services and the benefits of the Intuit Platform and successfully run our business. Even if you submit a deletion request, we may be required to maintain your personal information for as long as necessary to: comply with our legal or regulatory compliance needs (e.g., maintaining records of transactions you have made with us); to exercise, establish or defend legal claims; and/or to protect against fraudulent or abusive activity on our service. This means we may keep different information for different periods. If your account is canceled because you haven’t used it for a long time, we may delete this information immediately. There may be occasions where we are unable to fully delete, anonymize, or de-identify your personal information due to technical, legal, regulatory compliance, or other operational reasons. Where this is the case, we will take reasonable measures to securely isolate your personal information from any further processing until such time as we are able to delete, anonymize, or de-identify it.

@cpassman1959 once your oldest Roth account has been open for 5 calendar years, there is no reason to worry about the "5 year rule".      So ANY of those Roth accounts were opened prior to 1/1/21 and since you are over 59.5 years old, NOTHING would ever be taxed.  Nada.   Otherwise, all your original coversion dollars (as there are no direct contribution dollars) are considered to be distributed prior to any of the earnings).  None of the conversion dollars are subject to tax.     WHat is the sum of all your conversions? $150,000?  then the first $150,000 of distributions are not taxable and once the oldest ROth account has been open for at least 5 years, none of the earnings could be taxed.  

@rudygac wrote: I have tried to turn off the S mode, but can't tell if it's on or not. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-10-and-windows-11-in-s-mode-faq-851057d6-1ee9-b9e5-c30b-93baebeebc85#windowsversion=windows_11

I know expenses paid at the end of the calendar year for a term starting in the beginning of the next can be claimed the calendar year they were paid.  This is the opposite because of the lag in billing.   But more to the point, if she pays the entire bill from the apartment complex (January rent and November electricity) in January, and continues every month until May, will se have to prorate the entire May payment since graduation is May 5, or can she just prorate the rent part for those 5 days, but claim the entire electricity charge, and also claim the electricity bill(s) for April (which will be due in June) and May (the apartment complex will prorate for her ending the date she turns in the key, at least they didn't charge her electricity for August until she picked up her key even though we paid rent July 1 and August 1) which she'll probably get a separate bill for, either later in June or in July?   It's the electricity bill being charged 2 months in arrears which has got me confused as to how to claim.  We paid $11 for a few days' worth of electricity in August, before classes started the day after Labor Day, we have not claimed that from the 529 and wouldn't, just as we didn't submit for July or August rent.  But I want to make sure that she is allowed to claim all the electricity she used during the spring semester, and it would be really nice if she could pay and claim fall electricity (at least to include November - from the December meter read) before the end of 2025 but we just don't know when she'll even get the bill for that, it may be too close to the end of the year to submit it to the 529.  Since it's likely to be around $150/mo for November I'd like to get that covered by the fall COA because spring electricity bills to include December - April (and 5 days in May) are going to be more, because of the extra month, even though the COA for the semester is the same.  If we don't find a way to pay and submit the November electricity bill before the end of 2025, fall's R&B expenses will look like 4 months' rent and groceries, but only 2 months' electricity, and spring's expenses will be 4.25 months' rent and groceries but 6.25 months' electricity.  I'd like to shift that to 3 months' electricity in the fall and 5.25 months (as long as the last 2 months' can be paid after graduation and still be allowed to be reimbursed) in the spring.

I have tried to turn off the S mode, but can't tell if it's on or not.  I've gone to activation, and it says I have a digital license, but that's about I can do.  I go to the microsoft store like it says, but can't figure that out  either.  Tried the 'off the anti virius' and that didn't help.  And Win update says I have all the required equipment.  So, I think there must be something about TT25....  I'll try to use your links and thank you for the suggestions.

if the Dell has S-mode you need to permanently turn it off. does it meet minimum system requirements? https://turbotax.intuit.com/personal-taxes/cd-download/tta-system-requirements/  have you tried turning off any antivirus software/firewall until installed? do you get an error message?  your final recourse is support   https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/account-management/contact-turbotax/L2y9ZKpQB_US_en_US?uid=mhv11wb1 

We are are not TurboTax employees.   The folks who are replying to your questions here in the user forum are other users like yourself --  strictly volunteers.    Some of us have answered so many questions that we have been deemed to be "Champs" by Intuit -- but we are not on the payroll.       To call TurboTax customer support https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/account-management/contact-turbotax/L2y9ZKpQB_US_en_US?uid=m5s9l2vh   Monday- Friday 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. Pacific time  

So what would be the point of having the live support? If I'm trying to get help because I'm unsure of how this works (not an accountant) and I express this to the agent, "I feel like this is wrong, and I should be owing taxes?", they look it over, and say everything looks great. And then IRS says, no of course you owe us (about what I'd expected and saved, before I was promised a refund). What was the help I paid for? If the software gets it wrong, and then the live agent gets it wrong, what exactly was I paying for? Also, there's obvsl TurboTax agents here answering, they can surely keep the support open on a throwaway holiday that most people don't even get off. 

@user17628882651 And....TurboTax is not "tracking" your refund.   TurboTax gets no information whatsoever from the IRS after you file your return.   Once you file your return, you have to track the refund yourself on the IRS and state tax refund sites.  TurboTax will never know why you ended up owing more----TT has no way to know if you owed child support, back taxes, etc.   The IRS sends you a letter to tell you if they change the amount of your refund.   Once your federal return has been accepted by the IRS, only the IRS has any control.  TurboTax does not receive any updates from the IRS. Your ONLY source of information about your refund now is the IRS.     You need your filing status, your Social Security number and the exact amount  (line 35a of your 2024 Form 1040) of your federal refund to track your Federal refund:    https://www.irs.gov/refunds   To track your state refund:     https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/tax-refund/track-state-refund/L3jgO8PGs_US_en_US?uid=lt447ebr