"Pennsylvania needs to know who owned each property or item you disposed of." What???

[dlivesay]

I've finished my federal return and I'm trying to do my PA state return. It's telling me "Pennsylvania needs to know who owned each property or item you disposed of," but I have no idea what "property items" it's talking about, and if I click "continue," the questions just get weirder and weirder, talking about something called a "Coverdell ESA," which I am positive does not apply to me. It's like somebody else's information got dumped into my return and I can't get rid of it. I just want to finish my return so I can file and get my refund!

[jb3320]

I just got sucked into the same rabbit hole as you? Have you been able to resolve this for yourself?

[dlivesay]

It turns out this is caused by a bug in the way the state program handles data imported from a financial service. Items that should be ignored, because the net gain/loss is zero, are nevertheless imported. The program then asks questions about them without identifying what they are or where they came from. I had to go through the imported forms and delete the ones that should have been ignored.

[BrittanyS]

If additional forms are being generated from the import that is not needed for your Pennsylvania return, those forms can be deleted by following these steps in TurboTax Online:

1. Click Tax Tools on the left-side panel
2. Click Tools
3. Click Delete a form
4. Scroll Down to Pennsylvania Return
5. Click Delete next to Forms not needed for your return
6. Click Delete Selected Form
7. Click Continue
8. Verify Form was removed from the forms screen
9. Click Continue with my return when finished

@dlivesay 

[dlivesay]

@BrittanyS, Thanks, but I already figured out how to do that, but last year it did something even more infuriating. It generated a blank form that required "employer" to be filled in. Since I've been retired for several years, I don't have an employer, so I deleted the form, but TurdoTax REGENERATED it. After several unsuccessful attempts at deleting it, I finally entered "None—I'm retired" hoping it wouldn't confuse the IRS. I also had to enter a bunch of zeros where I was required to enter an amount.

Clearly the PA state software is getting progressively more insane every year, so I'm just going to file my state form manually this year. I can't see paying extra for something I have to troubleshoot and fix with little or no help from the vendor.