Problems with Latest Update?

[pesgas]

I filed my taxes in early April using the Premier Turbo Tax product with no issues.  (I've used Turbo Tax for probably 20 years.). Recently, I went back to look at my return using the Turbo Tax Premier software and I noticed my refund for California was about $2,000 less than it was when I filed my actual return.  After a good bit of investigation, I noticed that my tax form as filed shows that I answered "yes" to the question whether I had health insurance (which is correct).  But when I use the updated software and go to the tax forms and I look at my return, it shows a penalty of about $2,000 for NOT having health insurance.  And the health worksheet for California says "no" to the question whether I had health insurance and I cannot change it on the form.  And I don't see anywhere to change this in the program itself to get the correct tax result-- indeed, the program itself shows that I indicated that I had Medicare.

I'm assuming this must be the result of a recent update to the program, as there was never any indication of this problem before.  Has anyone else experienced this or have any suggestions?

[JotikaT2]

Unfortunately, there's no way to know for sure as we do not have access to your program.  However, if you are trying to get a pdf of your tax return as you filed it, I would recommend correcting the entry so the tax return matches what was filed with the taxing agencies.  Then, save a pdf copy of the return to your local drive so you have it for your records.  

[pesgas]

I ended up contacting Turbo Tax support by phone.  After waiting about an hour and half for a rep, I was assisted by a very nice customer rep who eventually figured out that I had to go back into the program and go Step-by-Step to edit my California tax return in the program itself -- such that it returned to the state it was in when I filed the return and so it matched the pdf of what I filed.  The program was clearly producing an erroneous result (perhaps due to a software error?) and the odd thing was that the program would not let me go into the forms and change the answer on whether I had health insurance.  But it would let me change the answer on any other question on any form or let me enter data in any other field on any form.  It was just the box for "yes" and "no" relating to health insurance that was "stuck" and could not be changed.  But going into the program and editing my California return finally changed the program forms so that the "yes" box was now checked (matching my return as filed) and the refund amount shown by the program was now correct.

[baldietax]

make sure you've saved a PDF copy of your return "with all forms and worksheets" as your official record.  unless you need to file an amendment you shouldn't need to reference Turbotax again or rely on the proprietary .tax file, Intuit only supports the s/w for 3-4 years (current tax year + 3 previous years).

[pesgas]

I always save a copy of my return and worksheets in pdf format.  And while it's true that I typically wouldn't need to access previous years returns, there is one instance when you might.  Such as when you make an error in a deduction on a previous year's return, and you need to run the program again with changed numbers to see if the error resulted in a tax benefit, such that you would have to claim additional income in the current year. 

And in any event, my larger concern was whether the problem I was having, if it indeed was a software error, might impact someone else.  I have used Turbo Tax for over 20 years and have always trusted it's reliability, so it concerned me that this type of issue was occurring.  

[baldietax]

ok just checking you have it, some people post here at a loss what to do when they only have a .tax file can can no longer use the s/w.

and I'm not excusing this behavior in the s/w update, at this point it shouldn't be affecting your return and you should be able to view it as needed.  some people I think on Windows have a way to turn off updates but I'm not sure how.