I thought I would try again as the last post generated no response from Intuit. There are three issues that Intuit needs to be aware of and, hopefully, address prior to next year. Two are ACA rel...
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I thought I would try again as the last post generated no response from Intuit. There are three issues that Intuit needs to be aware of and, hopefully, address prior to next year. Two are ACA related and the other is 529 related. The 529 issue has been in the software for a number of years and, for some reason, has not been addressed. All three issues, as I can attest, can lead folks down the wrong path and result in the wrong tax calculation or pushback/questions from the IRS. Since there doesn’t seem to be a more-formal “bug” reporting system for Intuit, forums will have to do. ACA issues: TurboTax does not properly fill out form 8962. Specifically, if you have a monthly difference in subsidy (perhaps because you’ve had your estimated income adjusted), TurboTax does not fill out Part II lines 12 thru 23. This is even though when you go thru the interview process, it asks if any months were different and asks you to fill in each amount, per month, from the 1095-A. This frankly makes no sense. Yes, the IRS rejected my return because of this, and I had to manually regenerate the form and fill in Part II. This is not a UX issue – it is a bug. TurboTax does not consider the income thresholds when asking if dependents have filed a return. The IRS uses dependent incomes for the ACA’s MAGI computation but only if the (individual, not cumulative) dependents had incomes greater than the IRS’s threshold of $15,000.00. TurboTax only asks if dependents filed a return and then blindly adds the total amount to the MAGI. In our case, none of our three children were anywhere close to $15K but each filed a return to get back a small amount of withheld taxes. The UX here needs to be changed to clearly communicate that answering yes is one thing, needing to file a return (and having it count against MAGI) is another. TurboTax has conflated "filed a return" and "has MAGI-relevant income." A family whose dependents file returns solely to recover withheld taxes — a common and correct thing to do — could easily end up with an inflated MAGI, a reduced subsidy calculation, and a surprise tax bill. Yes, this happened to us but we caught it before filing. 529 issue: TurboTax assumes all withdrawals noted on a 1099-Q are non-qualified unless the withdrawal is explicitly called out. TurboTax asks if a 1099-Q was received. If you answer “yes” it assumes the amounts were non-qualified but no where in the experience does it tell you to list each expense individually. Further, it ignores the fact that 1099-Q reporting is optional if all withdrawals were qualified. The interview should be amended to something like: “Did you receive a 1099-Q” “Were any of those withdrawals non-qualified?”: Yes -- take the user to the part of the experience where those expenses can be listed. No – tell the user “Congrats – you don’t need to report the 1099-Q because all your expenses were qualified!” The practical result is that qualified withdrawals get treated as taxable income, generating an incorrect tax liability. We were stung by this for our 2024 taxes and are still fighting with the IRS for an adjustment.