Some years ago I did my daughter's taxes when she lived in California (I am in NY). She does her own now and I no longer need any state other than NY. How can I tell TT to stop installing CA? Every time I update TT California is installed and/or updated.
When using the Desktop software, none of the Superusers (Champs), who have been using TTX for many years.......none of them have ever found a simple way to stop the download and updates of states you used "once-upon-a-time " in the desktop software.
They may continue to download and update every year until you install your software on a new computer that has never been used with TurboTax. You won't be charged for them if you don't actually use them, but it is still an annoying waste of disk space and download/update time
You will need to delete the state this year so that it won't carry over anymore. Refer to the following TurboTax FAQ for instructions: How do I delete my state return in TurboTax Online ...
Strangely enough, these instructions do not seem to work in my case, if in fact I am following them. I am using TurboTax Premier 2020. In the top left corner of my screen I hit File, then Remove State Return. However on the next screen there is no State listed to remove. In a way, not surprising, because I have not yet installed any. But as I said in my original post, every time I update TurboTax there is a reference to California, even though I have not used the CA State Return in several years.
When you gt to the Review/File, do you have the state return?
When I finish entering for the Federal return and go to the State Taxes section it shows my state and then below that "Other Installed States". Here it shows California and Connecticut, neither of which I require any more.
In the income section under Job(W-2) do you see you daughter's empty W-2 with CA in box 15?
If you never deleted that W-2 that could be the reason why you are getting that message.
I could show a similar screen print with states associated with returns I did many years ago. I'm no longer doing returns that involve the various states, but I still see "updates" for these states many years later even though I did not "purchase" the states for this year. I'm not sure why TT can not see that this is an aggravating visual issue for users.
Possibly, this feature could be overridden from the default. Try selecting a non-automatic option for the update checks where you would be selecting the updates. The prior state details are likely being carried over year to year "just in case."
If you are manually selecting what is updated, you may be able to opt out of the prior state updates going forward.
When using the Desktop software, none of the Superusers (Champs), who have been using TTX for many years.......none of them have ever found a simple way to stop the download and updates of states you used "once-upon-a-time " in the desktop software.
They may continue to download and update every year until you install your software on a new computer that has never been used with TurboTax. You won't be charged for them if you don't actually use them, but it is still an annoying waste of disk space and download/update time
Delete the folder the forms are in. Go to the folder that contains all the forms C:\Program Files (x86)\TurboTax\Premier 2020\Forms. You should see a folder for the state you want to delete. In my case it was Pennsylvania and the folder was named pai_20. Just get rid of the whole folder for the state(s) you no longer want.
I deleted the state folder under forms and it still installs the state
Please see this Turbo Tax FAQ on how to delete your state return. Delete a state
Hi - I did see the answer how to delete a state. The state that keeps installing, NY, is not there to delete but somehow it knows to keep installing updates. I had also deleted the NY file in the Forms folder. Nothing works.
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For what it's worth, I just got off the phone with Turbotax tech support, using the phone number they suggest, [phone number removed], and was told that there is no way to remove an unwanted state program, (not return, as noted above). I was told that it will be brought forward, year to year, and there is no way to prevent this and just learn to live with it since it causes no harm.
If you want to check this out, call them up but be prepared to jump thru menu hoops like you never encountered!
@toothmaven: Thank you for your diligent effort.
@TurboTax: C'mon. After decades of using TurboTax, I'm really tired of TT's sloppy engineering and indifferent attitude toward its customers. I've had it and am switching to a competitor.
so far this worked for me:
before importing last years data to this year, delete all the unwanted state forms not only for the current year but also for the previous year
@dghemmes: In regards to your advice "before importing last years data to this year, delete all the unwanted state forms not only for the current year but also for the previous year"
can you help the rest of us out by explaining exactly HOW to do what you suggested? Is this something that you've figured out how to do before installing TT for a new year? Or something that you have been able to do after installing but before starting a return for the new year?
My experience has been that if a state return was used during any previous year, as soon as a new version of TT is installed and started, it immediately does an update and brings down the unwanted and irrelevant state updates at that time and there seems to be no way to prevent it from doing so and no way to stop it later from continuing to act as if that state was required. So if you've been able to find a solution everyone else on this thread would be eager to hear how do it.