In previous years, there was a Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction Worksheet which allowed a deduction for health insurance above the line. Where is it for 2018?

jimcdenver · ‎June 1, 2019

According to the IRS instructions, this should be entered on line 29 of form 1040. TurboTax's 1040 form doesn't even have a line 29. What gives?

VolvoGirl · ‎June 1, 2019

It is now on Schedule 1. Self-employed health insurance deduction goes on Form 1040 Schedule 1 line 29, as long as the expense is not greater than your self-employment Schedule C Net Profit minus the deductible part of the SE tax (from Schedule 1 line 27) and any business retirement plan contributions on line 28.

Then schedule 1 line 36 goes to 1040 line 7.

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VolvoGirl · ‎June 1, 2019

It is now on Schedule 1. Self-employed health insurance deduction goes on Form 1040 Schedule 1 line 29, as long as the expense is not greater than your self-employment Schedule C Net Profit minus the deductible part of the SE tax (from Schedule 1 line 27) and any business retirement plan contributions on line 28.

Then schedule 1 line 36 goes to 1040 line 7.

jimcdenver · ‎June 1, 2019

Thank you. I will try that and see how it goes.

VolvoGirl · ‎June 1, 2019

jimcdenver · ‎June 1, 2019

Hey there, thought I'd post as to how to do this in TurboTax 2018 Premier. I don't know how this would be entered if you are truly self-employed and filing Schedule C, but for folks who are 2%+ shareholders in a subchapter-S corporation and therefore receive a K-1 from that corporation, this is how I finally got Turbotax to include this.

First, in the interview under "Wages & Income", then "Business Items", click on Update next to "Schedules K-1, Q". Click on Yes when asked if you want to review Schedules K-1 or Q. Click on
'Update" next to "S Corporations (Form 1120S) which will take you to the S Corporation K-1 Summary page. Select "Edit" on the K-1 for each individual for whom the corporation paid health insurance and are 2%+ shareholders (if more than one, you have to do them one at a time).

Click through all the various pages for which you entered figures from that K-1 and you will finally arrive at a page titled "Other Situations". The fourth line down says "I personally paid health insurance and/or long-term care insurance premiums for myself and my family and this S corporation paid me wages." Even though it is illogical if like us the corporation actually paid these premiums along with those for other employees, go ahead and click the checkbox then click "Continue". This will take you to the previously inaccessible "Self-Employed Health Insurance" page.

On that page, key in the figure in box 5 of your W-2 as instructed and then below that, the total health insurance premiums that were added to your W-2 to begin with. In our case, our accountant put this figure in Box 14 Other.

Although this is all really stupid, adding in the insurance premiums to each shareholder's W-2 as income and then having to go through all these steps to pull it back out again, this is what you have to do if you don't want to pay income tax on the insurance premiums you paid.

Note that until this morning, TurboTax did not include the necessary Schedule 1 form as mentioned above by VolvoGirl. When I opened up TurboTax this evening (02/08/2019), I was asked to install updates and among them was finally Schedule 1 needed to do this step. So make sure you have the latest TT updates installed.

Good Luck!

bart1 · ‎October 12, 2019

We have an S-Corp, our health insurance is two marketplace policies, so I had to do it a little differently.

When following JimCDenver's excellent write-up, and getting to the "Self-Employed Health Insurance" page where premiums are entered, I noticed the instructions say we should NOT enter premiums paid for a Marketplace policy. Entering our premiums here, anyway (just testing!) resulted in a Line 29 number that was larger than the premiums. This is because TurboTax was including them more than once (from when I entered our 1095-A forms).

I had to visit the Federal Taxes Tab, then the Health Insurance tab.

Checked "We all had health insurance coverage all year."

Continued.

Answered YES to Healthcare.gov plan.

Checked Obamacare plan (1095-A).

Edited our already-entered 1095-A forms, one at a time.

Verified the premium amounts.

Continued.

Checked the box "Self-employed and bought a Marketplace plan."

Associated the S-corp with the policy (just follow the instructions - your S-corp should already be listed from previous entries - if it isn't, you'll have to enter your K-1 info before completing this section)

Going through these steps for each 1095-A resulted in TurboTax putting the correct total of premiums (for both policies) on 1040 Line 29.

I hope this helps someone else. This is a difficult process each year, trying to figure out how to properly document this scenario in TurboTax.

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In previous years, there was a Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction Worksheet which allowed a deduction for health insurance above the line. Where is it for 2018?