Is my pension from the Teacher Retirement System taxable byNew York State? IF not how do I removed that portion from NY IT 201?

[Anita01 · Accepted solution]

Teachers' pensions, from the NY state teachers pension plan, are not taxable in NY. When you enter the 1099-R in the Federal section, you come to a screen asking you to select the source of the pension. What you check there determines if the pension is taxable in NY or not.  Go back to your Federal return, to retirement income, and edit this 1099-R to go through the questions again.  Choose state pensions to make it nontaxable, unless you see another category that better describes your pension.

[pengamo69]

I had to file an amendment for my NYS Tax Return in 2014 since Turbotax does not handle income from NYC Teacher's Retiremente Stystem as non taxable (no matter how many boxes you check). It is, instead, handled as taxable income and a $20,000 exclusion is applied.

This is how a have fixed it in the years that followed: go to your IT-203 (page 2) line 25-Pensions of New York State and local governments and the federal government. Manually enter your pension income. If you see $20,000 on line 28 (Pension and annuity income exclusion) enter zero. That will do it

[dghartman47]

I understand what is being said ; however, the 1099-R I received from the NYS Teacher's Retirement System only goes up to box 7, so there isn't any prompting that indicates one is to delete the amount in box 14 as "exempt".  Turbo tax state should give the option when completing the state form.  What I have done these past 5 years is to go to the forms directly and make the necessary change.  The point is, I should not have to do that and if I did not know that the pension was exempt, I might end up paying tax on that pension.  Turbo Tax is less than helpful in this case. 

[KLMays]

I have checked the box that I have a NYS pension and it still is only giving me the $20,000 exclusion not the entire amount

[KLMays]

I did that and NY is still taxing my pension    what do I do now

[PaulM92]

This is correct.  I just discovered that myself.  Fortunately I looked things over before actually filing.  I wondered why they were including this on my IT-201 as income.  Thanks for the hint.

[PaulM92]

This seems to be a glitch in TurboTax no matter what box you check on your 1040 (State exempt).

It has been suggested to correct it by manually going to the IT-201 and making the changes.  Am I to assume then that you would then complete the form on your own, without Turnbotax doing the calculations based on the revised numbers?

[DEisen]

Having same issue, seems if you change source to Government (Military) it gets handled like last years - this is crazy on a simple issue that Turbo Tax hasn't fixed it.  It seemed to work fine for the last 5+ years when entered as a NYS Pension.  Thank God I checked, would have cost thousands .... sometimes people are better than computers.

[TerryNY2]

My wife pension is from New York State Teachers' Retirement System 

I finally solved it by going to FORM 1099-R box 13 State = NY payer's state number = G

If you right click on the box you cam look up code for New York.  

[DEisen]

I'm not sure why this works for you but not me ... the only thing that seems to change the taxability of the distribution is where it came from, in my case, if its NY State & City Education it seems to be taxable, but it if it US Government it works like all previous years and is not taxable ...  Glad the G worked for you but it didn't for me.

[Pedernales69]

How difficult is it for TurboTax to fix this issue? It has been happening year after year, if you do not make manual adjustments NYS taxes your pension.
I did something similar: on form 1099-R I entered NY (State) in box 15 and $0 in box 16 (State distribution). It seems to be working so far.
Let's wait for TurboTax updates. You never know, they might surprise us:)