Colorado Form 104 Line 5 Business Meals Add Back

[elevate1396]

According to the instructions for Colorado Form 104-line 5, "Enter on line 5 the full amount of any federal deduction claimed for business meals on line 24b of Schedule C of Form 1040. Also include on line 5 any business meals addition from line 10 in Column A on any Colorado K-1 (DR 0106K) issued to you by a partnership or S corporation."

I entered 0 on line 5 of my Colorado Form 104, as I have no federal business meals deduction on line 24b of Schedule C of Form 1040 and I did not receive and Colorado K-1s from any partnerships or S corporation.

When running the review of my Colorado tax return, TurboTax flags the Form 104-line 5 entry of 0 and provides the following message:

Check This Entry

Form 104: Business meals deducted needs to be a positive number greater than 0.

If there is no business meals deduction on Form 1040 Schedule C or any from Colorado K-1s, then why must the value entered on Form 104 line 5 be a positive number greater than 0 if the actual deduction add back is 0. 

[DavidD66]

Have you tried deleting the 0 entry, so that there is no entry on line 5 of Form 104?  I know, it's a distinction without a difference, but sometimes in TurboTax (and other tax prep software) entering a 0 will not be accepted, only "no entry" in that field.  If clearing that entry does not work, try entering 1.  

[KiwiSteve]

Same situation for me. I have tried deleting the entry, but when I run the check again, it comes back with an error and shows "0." in the field.

I can enter "1", but it seems like a bug to me.

[KiwiSteve]

Update... (I'm the OCD guy who wants to do it right - not just fudge with a $1.)

There is a bug in TurboTax because if you enter $0 for meal expense in Sched C, it triggers the CO state to require you to enter >0 for this field.

To fix, go back to your Federal and look at all Sched Cs and K-1s. Hint: Use Forms and looking at each K-1 and Schedule C for "meals". (I don't know of a way to search the forms for "meals".) I found a Sched C that carried over $0 meal expense from previous years (in Supporting Details breakdown). I deleted that (go to the Easy Step and verify the field is empty to be on the safe side - if not, you can delete it there).

Warning: I had to delete the state data (File->Remove Colorado Data) and then go through the prepare state data again as the previously propagated meals did not update after the I changed the Federal forms.