When will Turbotax put Maryland's RELIEF act into effect and remove unemployment income from filers' FAGIs?

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
March 15, 2021
1 reply
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Maryland's RELIEF act is supposed to allow Marylanders to subtract their unemployment income earned in 2020 from their adjusted gross income. Turbotax isn't implementing that yet though and I can't file until they do. Is this something that is going to be resolved soon or should I be looking for somewhere else to file my taxes this year?

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ErnieS0

Level 15

TurboTax tax analysts and programmers are working quickly to update the program.

Maryland partially taxes unemployment income, but right now, we are unsure whether or not they will follow the new federal taxable thresholds. You can check How is my state taxing unemployment income? for updates..

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alicewandersAuthor

Level 2

How are you unsure? According to the Maryland Relief Act 03-04-21A Tax Alert from the Comptroller of Maryland, available here:

https://www.marylandtaxes.gov/RELIEFAct/docs/RELIEF_Act_Tax_Alert.pdf

It seems to say pretty clearly: "To the extent included in federal adjusted gross income, taxpayers may
subtract the amount of unemployment benefits received during the taxable year on their Maryland
return. This subtraction is only available to taxpayers with a filing status of single, married filing
separate, or dependent with a **bleep**I of less than $75,000, and filers with married filing joint, head of
household, or surviving spouse status with a **bleep**I of less than $100,000."

Does that not clear up the uncertainty and give us the information needed to press on? Because, unless I'm missing something, this is pretty clearly saying that the full amount of the unemployment income should be removed for someone in my income bracket. What other information are we waiting for to clarify this further? That document was released over a week ago. Which leads back to the question of how much longer we're going to have to wait if the information has been out there for a week and you still aren't sure?

LenaH

Employee Tax Expert

It depends. Per the State of Maryland, the tax forms related to the RELIEF Act signed into law on February 15, 2021, will not be ready until sometime in March. As of today, 3/15/2021, they still have not released the updated tax return. Therefore, TurboTax cannot update the program without the guidance of the state.

Updates on the availability of forms will be posted on the state website RELIEF Act Information.

Furthermore, the State of Maryland released a Tax Alert on 3/11/21, which states that all individual, corporate, pass-through entity, and fiduciary income tax returns that otherwise would have been due on varying dates between January 1, 2021 and July 15, 2021, inclusive, are now due on or before July 15, 2021.

Maryland Tax Alert 3/11/21

@alicewanders

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