MFS: bug in calculating health insurance penalty?

Married filing separately.

All family not legal residents from Jan to Sep.

All family had insurance from Sep to Dec.

Coverage question is asked only about me and my child, spouse is not there (she's not filing).

But as a result it shows that my me and child have exemption, but I will have to pay penalty for spouse.

Why this is happening?

UPD: Only happens if I claim spouse's personal exemption

1140

1 Best answer

Intuit Alumni

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:19 PM

You should not owe any penalty for claiming your spouse's exemption on your tax return.

The workaround to remove the penalty is to edit the Part VI Healthcare Coverage section on your spouse’s personal worksheet by following these steps:

Open up your TurboTax Deluxe desktop program and select your tax file
While you are in your tax file, at the right upper corner, select Forms
While you are in the Forms mode, on your left-handed side, from the top, select Personal Wks for your spouse
On Personal Information Worksheet For the Spouse, scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see Part VI Healthcare Coverage
To work around the issue, checkboxes for Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec
In the very last section, for insurance coverage exemption requests, checkboxes from January all the way to August.

Intuit Alumni

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:16 PM

Please verify. Did you all live in US the entire year ? When you said not legal resident from Jan to Sept, were you on any type of visas ?

New Member

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:17 PM

We lived outside US. Arrived to US only in Sep. If I don't claim spouse's exception there is no problem.

Intuit Alumni

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:19 PM

You should not owe any penalty for claiming your spouse's exemption on your tax return.

The workaround to remove the penalty is to edit the Part VI Healthcare Coverage section on your spouse’s personal worksheet by following these steps:

Open up your TurboTax Deluxe desktop program and select your tax file
While you are in your tax file, at the right upper corner, select Forms
While you are in the Forms mode, on your left-handed side, from the top, select Personal Wks for your spouse
On Personal Information Worksheet For the Spouse, scroll all the way down to the bottom until you see Part VI Healthcare Coverage
To work around the issue, checkboxes for Sept, Oct, Nov, and Dec
In the very last section, for insurance coverage exemption requests, checkboxes from January all the way to August.

New Member

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:20 PM

Thanks. Hope that will be fixed soon.

Intuit Alumni

Jun 4, 2019 9:00:21 PM

You are welcome and absolutely !