IRS wants additional tax on our 2022 return because the excess SS tax withheld is incorrectly calculated. Can anyone help? Thanks

[rjs]

Since you said "our" tax return, I assume you filed as married filing jointly. What most likely happened is that you entered one or more W-2s as belonging to the wrong person. You either entered a W-2 of yours as if it was your spouse's, or vice versa. The result is that one or more of your W-2s and one or more of your spouse's W-2s look like they are for the same person. When you first start to enter a W-2 in a joint return, you have to indicate whose W-2 it is. Incorrectly entering additional W-2s for the same person makes it look like that person had excess Social Security withheld, when there was actually no excess.

One other, less common situation that can cause incorrect excess Social Security tax to be shown on your tax return is that you mistakenly entered code A in box 12 of a W-2, instead of the correct code. If you have an amount on Schedule 2 line 5 (for 2022), this is probably what happened.

[VolvoGirl]

Are you married and filed Joint? And you both had W2s? The IRS is probably right. They usually are in this case. You assigned both spouse's W2 to the same person so it looked like that person went over the max. Turbo Tax is a self prepared return and it is your responsibility to check it over before you file. Then you would have seen the extra amount listed.

Or another reason could be you entered a code A for box 12. That can happen by accident if you were entering box 12 for something and picked Code A instead of D etc.

Do you still have copies of all the W2s? Look at box 4. Did either of you have more than 1 employer? You only get excess SS back if one person had more than 1 employer and those employers took out more than the max. For 2022 the max for Social Security is $9,114.00 on $147,000 of wages per person. So add up your W2 box 4. Is it more? Then add up your spouse's W2 box 4. Is their box 4 more?

THEN for next year, if you transfer over from 2022 you should delete ALL the W2s and re-enter them from scratch making sure to assign them to the right spouse.