Your number is valid but self-employment tax is not generated on a negative number. A loss on IRS Schedule SE line 18 will not generate self-employment tax. It is self-employment tax that may be deferred.
The self-employment tax deferral is an optional benefit. It is also a deferral rather than forgiveness, so those amounts will eventually need to be repaid. Half of the deferred amount is due on December 31, 2021, and the other half is due on December 31, 2022.
In order to fix this holdup to enable e-filing, I reduced one of my expenses on Sch.C and the issue went away because I had a positive net profit (income).
My point is TurboTax has software glitches in at leas two places:
- If my net income from Sch. C (or K?) is negative, the online system should have never opened up the Sch.SE Self-Employment section. It would be unnecessary.
- Since the software obviously does allow a negative result (Loss) from Sch.C, the program should have options to recognize the loss and nullify any errors occurring on lines 3, 4 & 18 (Sch. SE).
TakeAway: TurboTax has errors that need fixing. This cost me valuable time trying to resolve this CATCH-22! I am not a happy customer!