Did you file a joint tax return, and you both had W-2s? What
probably happened is that you entered your W-2 and your spouse's W-2 as if they
were for the same person, instead of one for you and one for your spouse. When
you first start to enter a W-2 in a joint return, you have to indicate whose
W-2 it is. The W-2 summary screen ("Here's your W-2 info") shows
which one of you each W-2 was entered for.
The program alerts you of the excess if
this happened and asks you to verify that the W-2s are entered correctly. If you don't make the correction at that
point then sadly the error is yours.
See screen shot for what the warning
screen looks like.
You both had Social Security tax withheld
from your pay. The maximum Social Security withholding has to be calculated
separately for each person. When you enter both W-2s as if they were for the
same person, it makes it look like that person had too much Social Security tax
withheld. The amount that appears to be excess Social Security tax goes on 1040
line 71. If you had entered each W-2 for the correct person, TurboTax would
have seen that there was no excess Social Security tax, and it would not have
put anything on line 71.
You received a refund of the excess Social
Security tax shown on line 71 of your tax return. But because of the error
entering the W-2s, it was not really excess and you were not entitled to that
refund. So now you have to pay it back.
And you better check your 2015 return line 71 and see if it
happened again. If you transferred from 2014 it would still be
wrong. Then for next year 2016 better not transfer or delete all the
w2s and enter them as new ones to keep the error from continuing.
Another
possibility is making an error on the box 12 of the W-2 ... also a date entry
error by the user which the program would not consider an error and would not
flag ... check your box 12 on each actual W-2 form in your tax file:
a code "A" or code "M" with a $$ amount may also
affect your line 71 value.
