8615 wizard broken

[LUKE D]

I’m having a couple of issues with the wizard for my kids’ 8615s (I have two). I’m filing under TCJA rules this year because it is much more advantageous for us than the pre-TCJA rules that go back into effect next year.

1. I’m begin asked “If the parents of Name had capital gains or losses in 2019, enter any qualified dividends that appear on their Form 1040, line 9b." — There is no line 9b on Form 1040. (I entered $0)

2. When asked about “Information About Other Children” I have to fill out three lines, “Net Quialified Dividends, Total Net Capital Gain, and Net Capital Gain” for the other child. — When I click on “learn more” for these three items I am referred to forms that do not exist as follows.

2a. "From the other children’s 8615 Worksheet, page 2, Line 5 Worksheet, enter either Worksheet 1, line J, Worksheet 2, line O, or Worksheet 3, line R as the net qualified dividend amount.” — There is no line 5 worksheet, or worksheets named 1-3, in the other child’s Forms.

2b. “…" — again this wants soimething from the Line 5 Worksheet that doesn’t exist.

2c. “…” — again looking for the non-existent line 5 or named 1-3 worksheets.

I have a line 7 worksheet, as well as a bunch of random line 7 supplementary forms, but nothing about line 5.

Does anyone know what I should do here?

[macuser_22]

I already reported the "9b" typo.   I have not confirmed the others but I attached your post to my "9b" bug report.

[LUKE D]

Thank you. Are the bug reports publically viewable somewhere?

[macuser_22]

No.  I notified a forum moderator that will submit it.

[LUKE D]

I think what’s happening in the other case is that the wizard is forcing me into the line 5 worksheet workflow, which is for pre-TCJA rules (i.e., uses the tax rate of the parent rather than trust and estates), even though I’ve selected to use the TCJA.

I believe that the line 7 worksheet that is being generated should be enough, and that’s why there’s no line 5 worksheet at all.

[LUKE D · Accepted solution]

Okay, the wizard is taking the wrong path when you select TCJA rules.

I did a workaround for this problem where I selected pre-TCJA rules for both children, and filled out all of the information up to the point where it asks about other children.

At that point the Child’s 8615 Worksheet has been added to the project, and completed. This is the worksheet that has the information that you need on it.

You can print out that single form for each child using the print functionality, and then restart the child income wizard section for each child.

This time you pick TCJA rules, and complete all of the questions, using the information on the forms that you just printed out.

At this point you’re done. I don’t believe that it uses any of the information in those questions to compute the taxes, it uses the “Line 7” worksheet information that uses “trust and estate” rules that it has already generated behind the scenes.

Hopefully this helps anyone that has this same issue.

[LinaJ2020]

I have done some testing and seem working without the workaround. The forms and worksheets that are missing on your end show up.  

In order to assist you, I would like to take a look at your program to see what's going on, if that's okay with you.  This is called a diagnostic copy request. To send me a copy, here are the steps you would need to take on your end:

In TurboTax online,

• Sign in to your account, select Pick up where you left off
• To your left, select Tax Tools, click on the drop-down menu
• Select Tools
• On the Tools Center screen, select Share my file with Agent ( the very last option)
• Follow prompts
• You will be given a token number
• Please provide me with that token number.  ( For security purposes, your personal information will not be revealed)

If you are using the desktop version, follow these steps:

• Open up your program if you have not done so

• On your menu bar at the very top, click "Online"
• Select "Send Tax File to Agent" and "Send"
• The pop-up will have a token number

@LUKE D

[bturk]

IT IS NOT WORKING AT ALL FOR ME. Seems they released the form before debugging. So FRUSTRATED!!!!!

[chadman]

Concur. None of the line numbers seem to align and the calculations seem incorrect.  Why is this kiddie tax form so hard on turbotax?  One would think a kiddie tax form should be simple. 

[LUKE D]

Hi @LinaJ2020 ,

I am using TurboTax Premier 2019 for Mac. Thanks for attempting to help. Contrary to your suggestion, there is no "Online" option in the menu bar, nor does searching for "online" under "Help" provide any useful alternatives.

Luke

[LUKE D]

Hi @bturk.  This is par for the course for TurboTax and Intuit.

My experience over the last 10 years is that they appear to prefer community debugging to investing in traditional options like tax form workflow regression testing. This means that the common forms and workflows all work fairly well, but things like filing childrens' taxes (particularly for 2+ children) often have problems because there are far fewer users exercising those forms. It's particularly bad whenever anything changes (like the TCJA changes that have impacted only users of the 8615 form over the last few years).

It's beyond me why they don't have a more comprehensive software verification infrastructure in place to deal with these things. Obviously it's not an easy thing to do given the amount of text prompt debugging involved (somehow their test suite needs to be able to interpret the interactive prompts in the same way as we do), but you'd think it would be something that they'd try and deal with. Or even have a suite of tests that they farm out to humans via taskrabbit.

As long as we keep buying the software there's little motivation for them to change though. Hopefully you're able to get the workaround working, if this is the same problem that you're experiencing. I honestly think that all of the information they're trying to collect isn't useful under the TCJA rules... the line 7 worksheet should be plenty.

[jrhoya]

I have 4 kids and we want to use the pre-TCJA rules. TT asks for data on other children. They ask for the "Net Capital Gain", which the "learn More" hyperlink defines as "Other Children's Net Capital Gain From the other children's 8615 Worksheet, page 2, Line 5 Worksheet enter the bottom line of the line 5 worksheet (either Worksheet 1, line I; Worksheet 2, line P; or Worksheet 3, line S) as the net capital gain amount." However, on Worksheet 3, there is no line S. It ends at line R. (The IRS form uses numbers, not letters).  Now it also says use the "bottom line", which would be line R on Worksheet 3. However, two lines above this blank,  this section of the interview wizard asks for "Net Qualified Dividends" which is defined as "Other Children's Net Qualified Dividends From the other children's 8615 Worksheet, page 2, Line 5 Worksheet, enter either Worksheet 1, line H; Worksheet 2, line O; or Worksheet 3, line R as the net qualified dividend amount."  So that is already asking for Worksheet 3, Line R and giving it a different name.  My children had qualified dividends, and they had capital gains, so I'd think those numbers should be different, not using the same data.

[LUKE D]

@jrhoya Indeed, Line S does not exist, and Line R appears to be misnamed in that tooltip.

I did not run into this issue as I'm using Worksheet 1, however I think it's safe to use Worksheet 3 Line Q and Line R in place of the requested Line R and Line S, at least given how the names line up with what we're asked to use on Worksheet 1.

The big caveat here is that I'm just a normal user and know nothing about taxes, so you'll have to convince yourself this is reasonable by reading the bolded names on the worksheets.

You might want to create your own issue as well, as my particular question was about TCJA rules (they save my kids a bunch of federal taxes, while increasing the state taxes very slightly).

[Gwaihir]

@LUKE D   you're a genius! Thanks.   I can't fathom why this wizard is so badly broken and they don't fix it. 

[LUKE D]

@Gwaihir Their philosophy really seems to be "get the product out and then deal with error reports." The don't seem to be too good at the "deal with error reports" part, particularly because there's not a public-facing bugzilla-style database, and building a unit and regression-testing infrastructure for this sort of wizard-driven workflow takes a level of commitment that they obviously don't have.

I think our problem here is that there probably aren't that many TurboTax users that file kids' taxes separately from the parents', and even fewer that have more than one child, which is where this particular error really comes into play. I think most people in that case probably have accountants or attorneys that are dealing with their taxes. I've tried other products and they're not better than TT for these tax circumstances from what I can tell.

It's too bad that the TT employees that frequent these boards aren't more responsive or proactive. They just paste the same form responses to make TT look responsive and then ignore anything further. I think you can actually get help via their phone support, but finding the right person can take multiple calls and escalations, all of which are frustrating. It took me 45 minutes to just pay for the state return for one of my children (TT couldn't process that specific CC request automatically, even though it was fine for my joint return and my other child's). The initial AI that you have to talk to is insanely frustrating.