Look up other posts regarding this known problem.
The only solution to get your surviving spouse filing the final married, joint tax return with deceased spouse federal and state tax returns successfully accepted via E-FILING is at FREETAXUSA dot com and not use TurboTax.
You do not have to print out a TurboTax created paper tax return and mail it in and even with certified mail with return receipt the IRS may lose your tax return (this happened once when an exception required a paper filing; the IRS finally acknowledged they lost it and accepted another filing).
The only difference in completing TurboTax vs Freetaxusa tax returns is that FREETAXUSA asks you to input BOTH your state ID and your deceased spouse's state ID numbers/driver's license numbers along with the prior year AGI.
TurboTax only allows for one person of the joint return's state ID entered in, but because a spouse died, the IRS wants to verify BOTH spouses' ID numbers.
TurboTax is supposedly aware of this problem, but they shirk fixing their software and ask people to just mail a paper return.
Turbotax spits out the same error for countless other longtime TT users: "Prior Year AGI Incorrect" when the AGI is correct.
The ONLY difference in the tax returns created by FREETAXUSA vs Turbotax:
* Freetaxusa inputs 1. prior year's AGI and 2. enter surviving spouse's State ID/driver's license number, issue date, and expiration date. 3. enter deceased spouse's State ID/driver's license number, issue date, and expiration date.
Voila, Freetaxusa E-FILED returns were accepted by the IRS and state tax board within half an hour.
* Turbotax: 1. prior year's AGI. 2. Asks only for surviving spouse's State ID and not the deceased spouse's. The IRS is making an exception for returns with a deceased spouse--they want to verify BOTH SPOUSES' ID info and NOT JUST ONE SPOUSE.
I have multiple elderly relatives who used TurboTax first via their CPAs and now on their own. Never encountered a problem e-filing until this one time to help my elderly widower father.
E-filing is the preferred option for most and customers are willing to pay the fee for getting quick IRS acknowledgement of acceptance of the returns.
Going to the post office and mailing a paper return is not allowed nor advisable for the 7 million people in the SF Bay Area who are under government-mandated shelter-in-place restrictions because of the high number of Covid19 cases and deaths (and many more unknown cases because of insufficient test kits). They only allow us to go out for medical reasons and food shopping, and if taking the dog for a walk, we must keep six feet away from any other person. E-filing is the only safe, permitted option at this time for many people.
Good luck to all those longtime turbotax users like my family who get the runaround from TurboTax to update their program rather than just cop out and say that people can just always file a paper return. It is clearly not an IRS problem because the IRS accepts FREETAXUSA dot com's E-FILED tax returns on the FIRST TRY for a deceased spouse and surviving spouse joint tax return.
