IRS prior year AGI rejection but we filed jointly prior year and TurboTax asking for separate prior year AGIs.

[rxlambright]

I'm married

In 2019 we filed jointly using purchased TurboTax software on a laptop. (Not the web TurboTax) But we filed paper in 2019.

For 2020 we filed jointly using purchased TurboTax software on a laptop but now we want to file electronically.

For our 2020 return it asked us separately what the 2019 AGI was for my husband and what the 2019 AGI was for me. But we filed jointly so we only see one AGI in the 2019 return. How do we separate the AGI???

We tried both using the combined AGI. It was rejected.
We tried 2 different guesses of what the breakup might be and both attempts were rejected.

How can we get by this hurdle so that we can file electronically going forward???

[rxlambright]

We used TurboTax Deluxe both for 2019 and 2020.

[AshleyLO]

Have you tried entering the AGI from 2019 for each of you?  Some have found that that's what is needed. The following thread may also offer more assistance: https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/my-husband-and-i-filed-jointly-but-its-asking-fo...

[rlambright]

We tried each of these scenarios and they were all rejected by the IRS:

Same prior year full AGI for each of us

Made 3 guesses at dividing up the prior year AGI between the 2 of us

Full AGI for husband and 0 for wife

Full AGI for wife and 0 for husband

What finally passed the IRS test was entering 0 for each of us.  The tax return was accepted by the IRS.

Zeros for each of us makes no sense but neither does the fact that the prior year filing was done with Turbo Tax and the same information was imported into this year's Turbo Tax.  Seems the software should know that we filed jointly last year and that we're filing jointly this year.  Turbo Tax should ask the right questions.

[Someone337]

> What finally passed the IRS test was entering 0 for each of us. The tax return was accepted by the IRS.

I can confirm this is the only thing that worked. Really disappointing that none of the help pages or guides correctly identified this for people that filed by paper the previous year and are now e-filing. Thanks to rlambright for reporting this here!!!

If you filed by paper in a previous year, the previous-year's AGI you need to use to e-file this year is 0. Just 0. Nothing else. Not your actual AGI from last year. Just 0. For both you and your spouse.

[TomL2]

Use 0 for both AGI for last year return works for me. I have spent hours to try to figure out the issue when efile rejected with the real and right AGI from last year.

This post helps, much better than the help desk. 

Turbotax really needs fix this or provides clear instruction for the users.