Lump Sum SSDI

[bobfoster]

In 2019 - My wife received a SSDI Lump Sum Payment for 2016, 2017 & 2018. 

Please follow through what I did and my question regards the "Tell us about Payments received in 2016" page.

"Which year was the this Lump Sum Payment for?"

I entered the year

"Lump Sum Payments"?

I put down the amount of the lump sum for that year as per her SSA-1099. The next page is where my question is:

This section seems to be dedicated to Lump Sum payments. On the page titled:

"Tell us about Payments received in 2016"; Enter the amount in box 5 of Form SSA-1099 and/or RRB-1099 received in 2016 and already reported on your 2016 return. (This is not common)

It shows a box with my name and a box for her name. I also am on SSDI and had a SSA-1099 for that year. Should I just complete the box for her since we are discussing a "Lump Sum Payment she received" of do I also enter my box 5 amount from my form? (Since it said this is not common, I am guessing I don't enter my SSDI earnings for that year) 

[ReginaM]

No, you would not consider your SSI since this screen you are referring to is in regards to your wife's  Lump Sum Payment only.

[bobfoster]

One more question:

First off, thank you very much for your reply. I just want to make sure I am thinking about this correctly.

A few pages after the one described above is a page: "Tell us about your 2016 Income". (Note: I also completed the same pages for 2017 and 2018 also)

Enter the following from your 2016 return.

Adjusted Gross Income: Our AGI includes both mine and her incomes so I put down the AGI from our 1040, correct?

Tax-exempt interest in 2016: We did not have any. 

Taxable Social Security Benefits from 2016: I put "my taxable" Social Security Benefits for 2016 in this box, correct?  (Naturally, my wife did not have a SSA-1099 then.) 

[ThomasM125]

Yes, you have answered those questions correctly. You were to enter the numbers from your form 1040 for the year in question.

[bobfoster]

Problem: On the page "Tell us about your 2016 Income", I entered my "Taxable" income that appears on our 1040 for 2016. I also filled in the AGI and like I mentioned before, we did not have any taxable interest. All numbers came directly from our Form 1040 for 2016.  

Once I do this for each of the 3 years, I get 3 errors with Smart Check. Here is what the error says:

"Earlier Year Lump-Sum Social Security Ws (2016): Earlier year taxable social security benefits for taxpayer should not be greater than zero." (Note: I am getting this same error for all 3 years) 

Those are the only errors I am receiving. 

Is this possibly an issue with Turbotax? Is there a number I can call that I can call to determine if this an issue? 

Update: I just spoke with a Turbotax Tax Expert (CPA) on the phone and after several people and much finagling, it was determined that I was completing this section wrong. The above replies are inaccurate so do not follow them. I had to do everything differently than what the above experts told me. If you to have this issue, I would recommend contacting Turbotax and working directly with their staff to resolve the issue. There was no charge for this service.

However, I'm now paying the IRS another $3k!!

Lesson Learned: Don't always listen to the replies you receive. I'm not convinced they were wrong nor that the person I was speaking to was correct, but I think I will contact a local tax expert and have them review everything. This is the first year out of 20+ years of using Turbotax that I am highly dissatisfied with their software.