Prior Year Tax Software

[mdenham]

I haven't filed my 2018 or 2019 taxes yet (I was deployed in the military for 2019). I have a question about downloading the 2018 software. I filed in 2017 with turbotax online.  Will the downloaded 2018 software be able to access any of my 2017 turbotax information or will I be starting from scratch? The ability of turbotax to "remember" information from the previous year is a huge benefit.  

[SteamTrain]

The 2018  tax software uses the .tax2017 datafile, right at the very start of a new 2018 tax file......provided that is is on your computer disk.

So, before you start a new 2018 tax return (really the first one for 2018 for you) ,  You need to download the .tax2017 datafile from your prior Online TTX account  (not the PDF file), dn place it on your desktop (Windows), or in some known directory, where you can browse to it, after you initiate the start of a new 2018 tax return.

The information it transfers is somewhat minimal, but does transfer names, SSNs, certain needed carryover information, and usually some tax forms that have been emptied of last year's $$ values (2017 in this case)....but ready to receive the next year's information.

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The data transfer must be done right at the very start of a new 2018 tax file...you can'st start one and wait until later to transfer in the 2017 file.