I did not check any FATCA filing requirement box but TurboTax says I did. Is there a software glitch?

[michaelthoryn]

Are there consequences if I file with the box checked? I have no foreign account or foreign interest.

[DaveF1006 · Accepted solution]

If there is an inquiry by the IRS, you can respond by stating you have no foreign accounts or trusts to report. Chances are there may not be such an inquiry but be prepared with that response if there is.

[johnkbauman1]

I have the same problem with the tax year 2021 software.  The FATCA filing requirement box is blank on all my 1099-INT forms and I have no foreign accounts or income whatsoever.  Turbotax insists the box is checked and does not offer a way to correct this software glitch.  Without a correction it's impossible to e-file a return.  In addition, this year Turbotax asks me to provide details about a non-existent rental property it claims I own in a foreign country. It asks me to provide all the property details on its Schedule E worksheet.  Without "fixing" these two imaginary errors in my return, I have no option but to print my return and file by mail.  That was not made clear to me until AFTER I had already paid for Turbotax Premium Edition and MAX protection. The added cost and inconvenience of printing and mailing 18 pages to the IRS not to mention the added delay in getting a refund is exasperating.

[MarilynG1]

Can you delete the FACTA (Form 8938) and Schedule E from your return?

In TurboTax Premier, click on FORMS in the upper right and on 'Open Form'  above 'Forms in My Return'.

At the bottom of the open form, choose 'Delete Form'.

The FATCA box is a requirement for when banks issue 1099-INT forms. The checkbox isn't something that produces a result with the input of interest income.

It shouldn't affect your ability to Efile whether it is checked or not.  If you can give more info about the Efile error you receive, we will try to help you. 

Click this link for more info on FACTA Form 8939.

[gbishop-593]

I also had this problem but it did not affect my ability to e-file my 2021 federal and state (NY) taxes.

After e-filing my 2021 taxes I was reviewing the pdf file and noticed that the 'Own a foreign account' was checked on my NYS return. Then I found the that this was also checked on my Federal return, though on the federal return the following boxes were checked 'No', so that additional forms were not needed. I went back into Turbo Tax and in the 1099-OID section for foreign accounts, somehow the 'I own a foreign account' box was checked. I then checked the 'None of the above' box and that cleared the problem.

I then went back to my 2020 tax filing and noticed that the same issue had occurred. So most likely the 2020 Foreign Account selection  was imported into my 2021 Turbo Tax. For the record, I had no problem e-filing my 2020 taxes and nor any issues related to this erroneous Foreign Account check box being checked.

[tagettel]

Ditto 2023 Tax Year...my actual Form 1099 clearly has an empty FATCA box, but the (multiple 1099) forms imported from my financial institution definitely all show the box checked in TurboTax.  I just went to "Forms" and unchecked the FATCA boxes on the affected 1099s.

[wmbenedetto]

Same problem here. The FACTA box is empty on the PDF versions of two 1099s, but the imported versions have the box checked. When I found the erroneous checkboxes on the imported 1099s, I unchecked them. However, Turbotax is still automatically checking the "Owned or signed on a foreign bank, broker, or other financial account" under Miscellaneous Income, with the message "We've already selected the second option for you because the FATCA box has been selected on one (or more) of your Forms 1099." I've reviewed all 1099s and the FACTA box is unchecked on all of them, yet Turbotax continues to insist one has been selected.

I manually uncheck the  "Owned or signed on a foreign bank, broker, or other financial account" box and select "No, I don't have foreign financial assets" on the next page, then click Continue thinking that the problem is solved. But when I got back to look at Miscellaneous Income again, the "Owned or signed on a foreign bank, broker, or other financial account" is checked again. I remember during the original filing process that I did the same thing. The fact that it reverts to the previous checked state with no warning is a serious flaw. 

EDIT: I continued through the process of submitting an amended return, despite the Miscellaneous Income section still being wrong, in hopes that I might be able to manually fix the form before submitting. During the error check process, TurboTax flagged the exact box that was the source of my original issue (Schedule B, Box 7a), warning me that the second checkbox should be blank. There are two checkboxes in 7a. The first was the one that was erroneously checked as Yes on my original return, indicating that I have an account in a foreign country, which I do not. The second box should only be checked if the first box is checked Yes. On the amended return, the first box is now correctly checked as No. But Turbotax didn't remove the second checkbox, and that's what was flagged as an error upon submission.

This seems like a series of bugs in TurboTax. The first bug is that the 1099 import incorrectly checked the FACTA box. The second bug is that the Miscellaneous Income section continues to auto-check the "Owned or signed on a foreign bank, broker, or other financial account" even when all FACTA boxes are unchecked. The third bug (more of just bad UX) is that TurboTax silently reverts the user's options when they say that there are no foreign accounts. The actual return ends up correctly indicating that there are no foreign accounts, which is ultimately what I want ... but I wouldn't have known that without just brute-forcing my way through the rest of the amendment process in hopes of finding a fix. Not everyone would go that far. The final bug is that TurboTax doesn't uncheck the second checkbox once the first is set to No.

All's well that ends well, I suppose, but it took way too much extra time combing through every single form multiple times to figure out what the issue was. Hopefully this post helps someone else who runs into the same issue.