Error on IRA Contribution Worksheet - Line 14

[Erik57]

When I run the review on my federal taxes, it gives me an error "IRA Contributions Worksheet: Line 15 - Amount of taxpayer's IRA contribution elected to make nondeductible should not be more than zero."

When I open the IRA Contributions Worksheet, it highlights Line 14 amount ($7,000), not Line 15 (which is "Excess traditional IRA contributions to Form 5329, line 15").

- Is the error a correct statement for Line 14?

- Why would TurboTax prompt me to make a choice about this in the workflow if a non-zero number is not allowed?

[dmertz]

Line 12 in the 2019 IRA Contribution Worksheet was eliminated when the age restriction on making traditional IRA contributions was eliminated, causing the line numbers of all subsequent lines to be reduced by 1.  However, the reference to line 15 in your case is one of many situations where the numbering in the associated error message was not updated to reflect the changes to the numbering on the worksheet.  The error message that you are seeing show be referring to line 14.

This error message implies that you have designated a nonzero amount to be treated as a nondeductible traditional IRA contribution when you have not actually entered any traditional IRA contribution.  Either delete the entry on line 14 or, if you have made no traditional or Roth IRA contribution, delete the entire IRA Contribution Worksheet.

[Erik57]

Thank you for clarifying the line number mismatch between the error message and revised worksheet.

This is puzzling because I have a traditional IRA contribution on Line 1 of the IRA Contributions worksheet. 

Line 12 (Deductible traditional IRA contributions from worksheet  is zero.

Line 13 (Nondeductible traditional IRA contributions from worksheet) matches the number on Line 1

Line 14 (Amount on line 13 you elect to make nondeductible) matches line 1. It is this non-zero amount that is flagged as an error.

[dmertz]

Ah, perhaps you had entered an amount that you elected to make nondeductible and you later made entries elsewhere in TurboTax that forced the contribution to be nondeductible, making an election to make any amount of the contribution nondeductible meaningless.  This can happen if you enter the traditional IRA contribution before completing your income entries.

I suggest deleting the IRA Contribution Worksheet and revisiting the IRA contribution section of TurboTax to reenter your traditional IRA contribution.

[Erik57]

Deleting the IRA Worksheets and starting over on IRAs resolved the error. Thanks!