In TurboTax 2018 deluxe with state with all the latest updates available as of this evening (1/17/2019), for a married-filing-jointly return, when the spouse gets a lump sum SS payment for a previous tax year, the smart form for the lump sum alternative taxation calculations does not pull in the Social Security earnings for the taxpayer (from lines 20a and 20b of the previous years' joint return file created by TurboTax). The smart form appears to pull in the correct entry for the taxable SS retirement paid in the previous year (line 20b on that year's form) but does not pull in the total SS retirement paid (line 20a on that earlier year's form). Specifically, I am talking about the "Earlier Year Lump Sum SS" smart worksheet in TurboTax 2018; line B near the top does not pull in the total SS paid (showing '0' instead), while line D in the second sub-worksheet ("Earlier Year Tax Return" smart worksheet) does pull in the right amount for the taxable SS paid. As a result, the review process keeps giving an error message (roughly, 'the entry on line D should be zero.'), one that is not helpful for identifying where the real problem is.
I was able to look up the right numbers from the previous year return and manually enter them in the smart worksheet, after scrolling back and forth several times within the smart worksheets to try to understand overall what entries were need for the calculation, and locating line B as the offending entry.
