How does one get to the screen that says Massachusetts Special Handling About This 1099-R?

Follow these steps:

1. Go to the federal income
2. Scroll down to your 1099-R
3. Edit
4. Scroll down to the state section, verify MA in box 15
5. continue, continue, continue, continue
6. Public Safety Officer? continue
7. Select your state
8. Select Mass box
9. Continue
10. Special handling
11. fill in your info

You can now exempt many types of state retirement income at that screen.

This screen does not come up. This is not for a Public Safety Officer (although checking that box makes no difference.) I went through this with at TT employee last Saturday who could not find it either. He said it would be fixed in a week or due because they did not have information from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Also, the page that asks if this was a regular contribution always defaults to "No" no matter how many times "Yes" is checked.

It is coming up on my screen. Are you using the desktop version? Maybe it needs to be updated? I am using desktop.

The program has a few questions it feels are very important and those blank out and make you answer them again. The regular contribution is a key tax question as it determines how it is taxed.

I am using the cloud version in MacOS using Chrome. It does not appear as you describe. What happens is that it brings the entire retirement income onto the taxable line on the state form. It is also shown on the non-taxable line. It will not allow you to electronically file because of this. And TT will only allow changes on the non-taxable line which, if done, increase the state tax liability.

So updates, edit 1099-R, continue, double check federal entries after the 1099-R and repeat.

Worst case scenario would be to switch to the desktop version where you can do an override. Your data file transfers without a problem. If you have already paid, customer service can switch you to the desktop due to the issue. I would recommend "fake finishing" online and paying to keep your file together and then swap over if necessary.  A fake finish would be to say you are going to mail the return, just to have the computer hold your information for next year.

Before I fake finish, a couple of things:

1. When asked if the Mass Retirement had been paid in prior years, the answer defaults to "no" no matter how many times it has been changed;

2. On the Mass Taxes and Credits Summary page, it says "Before we review your Massachusetts return, we have a few more questions." When you hit continue, it just goes to the page telling me I have finished my Mass Tax Return.

Something is amiss in the software and TT should fix it. I cannot be the only person with this issue.