incorrect amount in line 2 on 8606

[alex400]

TurboTax Premier (desktop) seems to generate an incorrect amount in line 2 on 8606.

I haven't had Traditional IRA balances for many years; each year I contribute the max (e.g., $8000) to my IRA and then convert it to Roth IRA a week later.

Thus no balance in Traditional IRA and just a few dollars I have to pay tax on.

I've checked my  8606's for the previous years, and they always had a 0 on line 2.

This year it's a large amount which, interestingly, matched the line 2 for my spouse (who was not doing backdoor IRA for a bunch of reasons). So, how come my 8606 - line 2 has some large amount instead of a 0 ?

[ReneV4 · Accepted solution]

This sometimes happens when filing jointly and the total value of all IRAs are combined. If your spouse's prior year basis is incorrectly associated with your profile, it will populate their information in your Line 2.

Since you are using the Desktop version, you can switch to Forms Mode to correct this.

1. First, open your Form 8606 and go to the Line 2 field. Click on the magnifiying glass to jump to the IRA Info Worksheet 
2. There, go to Line 12, "Basis for 2024 and earlier years" to clear your spouse's information from your field and verify that your spouse's worksheet contains their own basis
3. Or, right click and select "override", then enter zero as your basis. However, caution should be used when overriding because if TurboTax still believes that basis exists for your IRAs, you might get a diagnostic error.

If the above steps do not correct the error, you may need to delete Form 8606 entirely, save the file and close the program before walking through the IRA contribution section one more time to generate Form 8606 again.

[alex400]

Thanks for the reply!

To me, this situation:

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@ReneV4 wrote:

This sometimes happens when filing jointly and the total value of all IRAs are combined. If your spouse's prior year basis is incorrectly associated with your profile, it will populate their information in your Line 2.

looks like a but. Otherwise, any values prepopulated by TurboTax based on the previous year's information, might be incorrect (copied from the spouse's profile or something like that.