After 18 attempts to eFile the same return, The IRS finally accepted our return.
I was going to suggest that everyone with this problem sit at their computers and repeatedly attempt to eFile, which would amount to something like a denial of service attack on the IRS, based on the thousands of people with this problem. It might get their attention...
While it's true that this was an IRS problem, it is NOT TRUE that Turbotax couldn't do anything about it.
If TT would allow me to inject a small "mistake" on form 8960 by entering 125,000 instead of 250,000, then the IRS would have accepted the return two weeks ago and it would have made no difference on the amount of taxes due.
Apparently, if you purchased the DVD version of TT, you have the ability to override entries on forms, which would have done the trick. But since I already paid for the online version, I wasn't about to spend more money on the DVD version.
Next year, I will re-investigate the most flexible means of eFiling tax returns.
