Hello,
I have been using Turbo Tax for over a decade, and I continue to run into this problem of having to file my State Return via USPS mail instead of e-file. I have a unique situation that Turbo Tax does account for. I am in California and in a Registered Domestic Partnership (RDP), which we did long before we were allowed to marry. The process for RDPs is that we must file single for our federal returns with community property statements and jointly as married for the state return. Turbo Tax asks these specific questions at the beginning of the return, to guide you through each return. This means that we file two singles for federal and a joint for state. To do the joint for state Turbo Tax has me do a mock joint federal (that will not be filed) to populate the joint state. All is good so far. However, when I come to the e-file part, I have to choose not to e-file the joint federal because it is only used to complete the joint state and the single returns will be the official federal returns actually sent to IRS. Well, when I choose not to file the joint federal and only e-file the joint state, there is an error saying I can not e-file the state without e-filing the federal.
This is extremely annoying, and I haven’t complained about it because I had hoped that Turbo Tax would recognize this glitch and fix it. Unfortunately, after more than 10 years they have not figured it out. Turbo Tax asks when creating the return, if this return is a “mock” married federal return to be used to prepare the married state return. So, they know that the federal is a “mock” and will not actually be filed. However, they do not allow the state to be e-filed without the federal to be e-filed either first or at the same time. This means that the state return has to be mailed via USPS. There has to be a way that the software recognizes that this is a “mock” federal and allow the state to be e-filed on its own. I know this is a unique problem, but Turbo Tax recognizes the unique relationship by asking about RDPs and creating “mock” federal in the beginning, they are just missing an important step at the end to allow the state to be e-filed in this situation.
Could someone please forward this to the software engineers to let them know the issue and hopefully fix this.
Thank you
