Medical Mileage Deduction

[WBT]

I believe that the Turbo Tax software has an error.  When I am entering medical expense deductions and I get to the page for deducting medical mileage, it requires that I have a mileage number greater than zero.  I did not drive to any of my medical appointments because my retirement community provides me transportation to medical appointments without additional charge.  However, Turbo Tax will not allow me to enter additional medical expenses after the medical mileage expense unless I lie on the tax return and say that I did drive to medical appointments.  I feel that it is not good, and may land me in jail, if I knowingly lie on the tax return.  Can Turbo Tax correct this error and allow me to enter a number of zero or allow me to delete the zero and have nothing in the box so that I accurately report the medical mileage on my federal income tax return and then am able to enter the remainder of medical expenses?  I have a large amount of medical deduction for medical expenses which the retirement community pays for me as well as substantial amounts of medical insurance, which, with my state income taxes, means that I itemize my deductions -- so this is a critical issue for me.  Please help me.  Thank you.

[JohnB5677]

No, you should not be required to enter anything under Medical Expenses for Mileage if you didn't have any.

Please be sure your in the right place.

1. Sign into TurboTax.
2. Under Federal select Deductions and Credits
3. A menu will appear.  
4. Scroll down to Medical.
5. Hit the down arrow and select Medical Expenses.
6. Continue through the interview questions.
7. There will be one for Tell us about anything spent on medical travel
8. There will be three selections available
   1. Lodging
   2. Other (bus, parking, taxi, etc.)
   3. Mileage driven to get medical care
9. You can choose to leave this blank, or enter data.

You should now be able to continue with your tax return.

          

[WBT]

JohnB6577:

I appreciate your quick response and have read your answer closely.  I used the technique you specified in your response to attempt to enter zero or delete zero in the box to the right of "Miles driven to get medical care" numerous times and am given the error message "!Value must be greater than zero" with the box highlighted in red, each and every time - probably 15 or 20 by now, and the program will not respond to the Continue button at the bottom right of the page.  My Turbo Tax 2023 is up-to-date, I believe, version 023.000.0428, and I still get the exact same response as I originally reported.  I assume that you have attempted to enter a zero response in the Miles driven to get medical care box on your personal copy of Turbo Tax 2023 and are able to enter a zero amount or blank amount of mileage and are able to continue with date entry.  For some reason that I cannot at this time understand, I still am not.  Why would I have a different result on my version of Turbo Tax 2023 than you have on yours?  I am using Turbo Tax 2023 on a New HP computer purchased in September, 2023, with a Windows 11 operating system that I keep up to date, version 22H2, which my Control Panel says is up to date though there seem to be methods to up date to version 23H2 other than with the Windows Updater I use.  I have tried, both before and after my initial communication to Turbo Tax, to go to the Schedule A, Line 1, Medical Expense Worksheet in Form View and delete the green 0 that appears there, without success, to see if I can get a blank on the Step by Step view for Tell us about anything spent on medical travel box, without success.  I am not a crank; I am a reasonably intelligent lawyer who is correctly reporting my problem and is at an impasse with the program letting me complete the entry of medical expenses in the Step-by-Step method.  Any further assistance would be appreciated.

[JohnB5677]

I can hear your frustration.  We can work through this together. 

• Your hard ware and software sound fine.
• I was able to recreate your initial problem on the Desktop software.
• 
• However, I could simply delete the zero and the problem cleared.
• Your machine must have locked you out.
• Please try this:

1. Go to FORMs mode
2. You should be on the Medical Expenses Worksheet
3. check at the bottom of the screen
4. It will show    Print   Delete Form   Close Form
5. 
6. Select Delete Form
7. Unfortunately you may lose your Medical Data,
8. But it should correct the problem.

If the problem persists you can contact me by putting @JohnB5677 in your answer.

If necessary, you can send us a copy of your program to analyze.

[ssu11321]

what a stupid answer!! I have lots of medical expenses I am NOT going to delete the form and start over.

This is a major bug 

You cannot continue if the medical miles are 0.00

[DoninGA]

@ssu11321 If the medical miles box is prefilled with a 0 and you are using the TurboTax desktop edition for Windows, there are probably Supporting Details for that box that needs to be removed.

Put your cursor in the mileage box.  Then click on Edit at the top of the desktop program screen.  Click on Add Supporting Details then click on Remove at the top of that window.  You should now be able to enter the mileage.

[WBT]

Eventually, to solve the problem I wen to the Medical Worksheet in the View/Forms drop down list and at the Medical Miles Driven  line, I able able to delete the zero on that line and was able to return to the Step-by-Step view and was able to get past the Tell us about anything spent on medical travel page.  Thank you for your efforts.