3690888
Can someone answer in detail how TurboTax handles an individual filing where the income is uneven through the months/quarters, and I want to use the Annual Installment Income method to calculate my taxes/penalties? (assuming I have made some estimated payments during the tax year). Which part of the interview addresses this? Does the interview walk you through it? or does it simply "throw you in the pond" and point you to a form soup?
This will determine whether I even buy the software next year (you got me this year, and I'm not on the annual installment this year).
Thanks
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If you get a penalty on 1040 line 38, you might be able to eliminate it or at least reduce it. You can go to Federal Taxes tab or Personal tab, under Other Tax Situations and select Start by the Underpayment Penalties. You will answer a series of questions that may reduce or eliminate the penalty. Or you can elect to have the IRS figure the penalty for you. It's form 2210.
How to add form 2210 for Underpayment Penalty
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-payments/help/how-do-i-add-form-2210/00/25703
It's under
Federal tab or Personal (for Home & Business Desktop)
Other Tax Situations
Additional Tax Payments
Underpayment Penalties - Click the Start or update button
If you get a penalty on 1040 line 38, you might be able to eliminate it or at least reduce it. You can go to Federal Taxes tab or Personal tab, under Other Tax Situations and select Start by the Underpayment Penalties. You will answer a series of questions that may reduce or eliminate the penalty. Or you can elect to have the IRS figure the penalty for you. It's form 2210.
How to add form 2210 for Underpayment Penalty
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-payments/help/how-do-i-add-form-2210/00/25703
It's under
Federal tab or Personal (for Home & Business Desktop)
Other Tax Situations
Additional Tax Payments
Underpayment Penalties - Click the Start or update button
When you run thru the AI method under Other Tax Situations / Underpayment Penalty you will need to provide the AGI (Form 1040 line 11), withholding, qualified dividends and long term cap gains cumulatively per quarter for 3/31, 5/31, 8/31 (12/31 being your full return) which line up with the ES deadlines (note the uneven quarters (3,2,3,4 months) when you use AI method, whereas by default for penalty/ES calculations everything is just divided evenly by 4). You will need to do that calculation for these 3 dates offline yourself and input into TT, and there isn't much way around that (from what I know of TT desktop premier version - I assume home & business is same). You also need to take into account any adjustments correctly in the AGI so the annualization process doesn't inflate those above the limit e.g. on Form 1040 line 10 if you have a full-year HSA deduction of 4150 you can't deduct 4150 from your Q1 AGI or it will annualize to a 16600 annualized deduction. You may also need to do the same process for your state return, and they may have different dates e.g. VA asks for 3/31, 4/30, 8/31, 12/31 treating Q2 as only 1 month for some reason.
Bottom line - you need to calculate Form 1040 lines 1-11 yourself for these 3 dates and similar for state. This all can be a bit of work to calculate depending how complex your situation is, and whether it's worth the time doing that depends how much penalty you are trying to eliminate.
If you have a large unplanned income event later in the year e.g. Roth conversion or large cap gain event and pay a one-off ES then the AI method can help justify the uneven income and ES payments to reduce and hopefully eliminate a penalty; this can be a worthwhile process to eliminate a large penalty that would be determined otherwise.
If the income events happen earlier or thru the year then AI method may not help that much and you may just be better off paying quarterly ES even if it incurs some penalty for Q1 etc as you can defer paying some tax til later in the year or final filing (and earn interest in the meantime). Paying ES based on prior year tax also guarantees fixed even ES payments regardless of your current year income and timing, tho in some cases can be an overpayment of ES if you are required to pay 110% of last year due to high AGI but only need to pay 90% of this year if that is smaller. It all depends your situation, what your safe harbor calculation for prior year and current year is (see Form 2210 lines 1-9), how uneven is the income and how much penalty you are trying to solve for.
Not a CPA just my 2 cents, hope this helps.
Thanks, and yes indeed - you have rightly identified the source of uneven income.
Sounds like there isn't a way around the manual intensive process, and the software is probably not of much help. Appreciate your input.
@baldietax is correct that Turbotax does not provide help for the AI method. Generally the AI method won't work if the bump in income is in the early periods because of the annualization. one thing you might be able to do is increase your withholding for the rest of the year rather than pay estimates. by default, 1/4 of withholding is deemed paid each period regardless of when actually withheld.
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