Entering dates of federal service dates on the Oregon tax form

[sanpan59]

I understand that Oregon allows a deduction from OR income that is based on federal service prior to 1 Oct 1991.  

The Federal Service "to" date is the ending date of your federal service on which the retirement pay is based.  You should also find a request for the Federal Service "from" or beginning date.  The percentage of your service prior to Oct 1991 is used to deduct from your OR taxable federal pension. 

I have 2 periods of federal service that when combined make up my federal pens amount.  My first period of federal service was from 09-05-1978 to 08-01-1980 and then from 06-01-1993 to 12-31-2019.    When the federal government calculated my federal retirement, they ran the prior period of service to the beginning date of my 2nd period.  The retirement dates that they showed from me was from 07-04-1991 to 12-31-2019. 

What dates do I record under the federal pension section of Turbo Tax? How do I get credit for all the time period from 1978 to 1980 on the program? 

[RobertB4444]

If you are audited the service dates that they provided you when they calculated your retirement are the service dates that they will look at.  You need to be certain that you can document the dates of your service without using the service documents from your retirement which will be tricky.  

But if you are certain that you can do so then the easiest way to make sure that you receive credit for your period of government service is to set your start date 23-ish months before the Oct 1 1991 threshold.  That gives you exactly the correct amount of service prior to the cutoff date and is pretty much the same thing that they did when you retired.

[sanpan59]

Thank you for your reply.  What I needed up doing was entering the 7/4/1991 date and manually inputting 23 months and then 319 months after 1991.  That came close to the way that I had manually calculated the subtraction amount for my state tax information.  It didn’t kick me out or tell me I had an error.  I can document all of my federal service should I ever get audited.  They don’t make it easy!! Now I am wondering if I should go and do amended returns for however far I can go back.  I also spoke with someone at the Oregon department of revenue who helped me calculate the percentage which was 7% of my federal pension income.  The way I input the numbers seems to be pretty close to that figure when calculated manually.  We shall see!! 

It would be easier if Turbo Tax told you to input the numbers seems of months before and after 10/1/1991.  That seems to be easier to understand.