Amending

[Cheebses3]

While completing my 2022 tax return, I mistakenly selected that I wanted my refund mailed to me.  After completing my return, I tried to go back and change it to "apply my refund to my next year's taxes" instead, and the only way that looked right to me was to amend - so I apparently filed an amendment - wrong thing to do?  If so, is there any way to fix this?  If I leave it as is, will it cause a problem with next year's taxes? 

[xmasbaby0]

Amending your tax return to change how you wanted to receive the refund for the original return will not work, so if you did not send in the amended return yet, do not bother.   You should only amend a tax return that has been filed and fully processed by the IRS.  It takes the IRS six months or longer to process an amended return.

What is NOT clear from your post is whether you already filed the original return.  Did you e-file?  Was it accepted?   Once a tax return has been filed and accepted, you cannot change how you want to receive your refund.  The IRS does not allow you to change it.  

Did you e-file?  Did you click a big orange button that said “Transmit my returns now?”

When you e-file your federal return you will receive two emails from TurboTax.  The first one will say that your return was submitted.  The second email will tell you if your federal return was accepted or rejected.  If you e-filed a state return, there will be a third email to tell you if the state accepted or rejected your state return.

First, check your e-file status to see if your return was accepted: 

https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/efile-status-lookup/

If the IRS accepted it, what does it say here?  

https://www.irs.gov/refunds   

[dmertz]

You can't change the refund method on your originally-filed tax return.  If you filed an amendment and indicated that you wanted an overpayment to be applied to next year's taxes, that can only come from a overpayment shown on line 21 of the Form 1040-X.  If your amended tax return showed no change in tax liability from the original, there is no amount to refund or apply to next year on the Form 1040-X, so it's hard to see how you did anything by filing an amendment.  Assuming that's the case, the IRS will likely reject or ignore the amendment and there is nothing to apply to next year's taxes.

If line 17 shows the same amount of tax payments as shown on the original Form 1040, line 18 correctly shows the amount that your original tax return showed is to be refunded to you and there are zeros everywhere in column B, Net Change, line 21 should be zero.  If line 21 of the Form 1040-X is nonzero, what did you change to make that happen, perhaps mistakenly.  

[Cheebses3 · Accepted solution]

In my particular case, I had not yet filed the return (mail-in).

I was able to resolve my issue as follows:

I was able to go back in, using "Add a State" to re-open the return (a particularly insane UI method but the only way I found to do so), and update it as I needed to in order to apply the refund to next year's taxes. Then I printed and mailed it in.