I am clergy and pay Self Employment taxes on my housing allowance and salary. I reported that I am clergy, filled in my Housing Allowance.

[terrylriddle]

The next question is what do you want to pay Self Employment tax on, I chose salary and housing.  I can't tell if they have calculated that, I have almost completed by taxes, but don't want to file yet.  How can I determine what the S.E. tax has been included.

[Opus 17]

Because turbotax online hides the forms until after you pay, you have two options.

Start to file, pay the fee, print your return to review its but don't do the transmit step.  Check schedule SE.  Or, go to Mt Account / Tools/ Tax Summary/ Preview my 1040 and look at line 57.  It should be about 15% of your wages plus housing.

However, there is also a bug in clergy SE taxes that affects some customers.  This bug has been reported, but for now, there is no clear fix.

What seems to be happening is that the choice to pay SE tax on "both" housing and wages does not "Stick" and reverts to one of the other choices.

That means you aren't paying enough self employment tax.  This is hard to diagnose in turbotax online since the worksheets are hidden, but you can go to My Account / Tools/ Tax Summary / Preview my 1040, and look at line 57 (SE tax).  It should be roughly 15% of the combined total of your wages and housing allowance.  Yours may only show 15% of wages.

Some customers have reported fixing the problem by deleting the W-2 and entering it again.  Also, make sure you enter the housing allowance on the screen that asks for housing allowance and housing expenses (in the W-2 interview after checking the box for "special circumstances.")  Even if the housing allowance is in box 14 of the W-2, it needs to be entered again on the later screen.

The only other solution for now is to change to using turbotax desktop version installed on your own computer from a CD or download, since the problem seems to only happen in Turbotax online. The desktop version also gives you any time access to all the worksheets so you can verify the calculations before filing.  You can transfer your partially completed tax file from your online account to your computer so you don't have to start over from scratch.