I'm testing out the unlinking. So if I do that, I have to go in and manually put in the SEHID and then TurboTax will use that to calculate a PTC. And then I have to play with those to find the right pairing right?
But where do I manually put in the SEHID? I'm guessing you're saying to put it in on Schedule C? That would be clearly incorrect and have the wrong impact on my taxes by reducing my net business income (which would have all kinds of trickle-down effects including limiting how much I qualify to contribute to retirement accounts and my QBI. It surely has to go on Schedule 1, Line 17. So are you actually saying to go into Forms mode and just plop the SEHID I calculate onto Schedule 1, Line 17? How does this work? And once I do something like this, is my e-filing really going to go through and pass muster?
Another potential problem is Form 7206. I believe it has to be filed if you are claiming the SEHID. But TurboTax doesn't actually complete it fully. Instead for self-employed people with an ACA plan, they just put a footnote regarding that at the bottom of Form 7206 I guess to tell the IRS what's going on. I assume if you unlink the health insurance, that footnote won't show up on Form 7206. That may cause another problem?
EDIT: Just after posting this, I had an idea and went to Form 7206 and put the SEHID amount that makes sense on Line 1. Using that it completed Form 7206 and then put the number on Schedule 1, Line 17. And running it through the review, TurboTax says it's ok. So if you can calculate the correct SEHID, this might be a way to then put it in there as a self-employed person that can get it into the right places on the tax form. Hopefully it would actually e-file correctly this way too and not get rejected by the IRS but I don't know that yet. It still seems like a nightmare figuring out the correct SEHID to put in, especially if you need to do so at various levels of Traditional contribution for testing. But at least this may solve one tiny piece of this puzzle.
I suspect that part of the reason TurboTax is able to make errors like the one in my case is that it's not fully filling out Form 7206. Line 1 of Form 7206 right off the bat puts a limit on the SEHID at the total actual out-of-pocket cost of health insurance. But since TurboTax is just skipping filling out that line, it's able to completely miscalculate and give an SEHID way above what it should. So it stands to reason that the solution to this might be just fill in Form 7206, Line 1 in Forms mode, thus doing what TurboTax itself should be doing but isn't. So far it seems to be working.
EDIT 2: I also realized that testing different Traditional contribution levels may not be as bad as I thought. The entire problem was that once the APTC repayment limitation kicks in, TurboTax should be factoring that into the SEHID calculation but wasn't. That APTC repayment limitation holds over a very large range of AGIs. If the SEHID, when there is a repayment limitation, is usually the sum of the premiums already paid plus the repayment limitation amount, then you can just manually put that in Form 7206, Line 1 and then you can test Traditional contributions over a wide range of AGIs. The only issue would be if you pass the AGI at another FPL % cliff, in which case you just go to Form 7206, Line 1, change the amount there again, and now you can test Traditional contributions over another very wide range of AGIs without having to change the SEHID each time. I was thinking I'd have to change the SEHID at every single Traditional contribution level I tested. But since the APTC repayment limitation amount remains the same over many AGIs, the sum of previously paid premiums and that repayment limitation also stays the same over many AGIs. Curious if people think this would work as I describe.
