If social security is my only income why does turbotax want me to file by mail?

If your only income is Social Security, you are correct, you don't need to file a return.

It could be that the program knows you don't need to file a return, therefore you can't Efile, but if you want to prepare and file a return, you can do so by mail.

Here's more info on Is My Social Security Taxable?

If you only have SS and know it's not taxable then why fill out a return and file?  You can't efile a return with 0 taxable income so if you want to file you can add $1 of bank interest  to let you efile.  Enter a fake 1099INT and put $1 in box 1.  

Thanks for replying.

That's what was confusing for me. It looks like it is telling me I need to file a return, but I understood I wasn't supposed to have to.  This is the first time I've had ONLY SS income so it hasn't come up before. I was expecting the program to just tell me I didn't have to file, but it listed 5 or 6 problems that said I needed to file. Those problems were on the 1040 form showing that there wasn't any taxable income.  Which made it even more confusing.  I'm going to guess that the program is just not set up to confirm that filing isn't required. And keep my fingers crossed.

Tks again,

Mike

Thanks for replying and for the great idea.  I'm going to give it a try and see if that lets the program get past the recommendation for printing and filing by mail.

Tks,

Mike