Why am I being forced to take a self employment tax deferral by entering info on SE-T line 18? If I enter a value, it calculates a deferral and adds it to my refund.

[bendsmith83]

I do not want to defer, but the software is forcing me to enter a value which then automatically defers a certain amount of the SE tax.

[CatinaT1]

You are not required to take the deferral.

To get past this screen so you can file your taxes, you need to update Schedule SE-T.

The process: delete Sch SE-T, take a quick run through of the self-employment to recalculate Sch SE-T, and then turn off the Max Deferral.

To do this in TurboTax, follow these steps:

First, delete Sch SE-T that applies by following these steps:

1. From the left menu, select Tax Tools.
2. Select Tools.
3. Scroll to Delete a Form.
4. Scroll to Sch SE-T, select Delete, confirm the deletion.

Next, to replace Sch SE-T, return to the self-employment income & expenses interview in the Income & Expenses section and select Edit/Add.

1. Select Edit for your business.
2. Scroll down to Done so that the Sch SE is recalculated. 
3. Finish any other questions in the self-employment interview and click Continue. 

Lastly, revisit the section for the Self-employment tax deferral entry:

1. Return to the Deductions & Credits section.
2. Scroll to Tax relief related to COVID-19 and Show More.
3. Select Self-employment tax deferral and select Revisit.
4. Answer Yes at the next screen to get back to Let's start by getting your eligible income.
   1. If you do not want to defer any self-employment income, "Enter your eligible self-employment income" should be blank.
      1. Select Continue.
   2. At Tell us how much you'd like to defer, "Enter amount" should be blank.
      1. Select Continue.
5. Scroll down and select Wrap up Tax Breaks and Continue.
6. Run through the Federal Review again.

[bendsmith83]

Thank you, that was helpful.  

One clarification: at the bottom of above instructions in the Deductions/Credits section for self-employment tax deferral, I was not allowed to put a blank in the row.  When I would check 'yes' to take the deferral, it would verify if I was eligible.  Since I am getting a refund, I am not eligible.  But when it ran the federal review, it forced me to put something in the box.  Since I couldn't leave it blank, I put in 0, which achieved the same result.

Again, thank you for helping me find how to delete the form and re-do it.