Blank screen

[JohnW152]

There are a few fixes you might try, if you haven't already.

See if the guidance in the TurboTax Help article How do I fix missing screens, buttons, or images in TurboTax Desktop for Windows? will help with your issue.

@trbo98

[mazh]

Thank you. The remedy is for Windows. I have the Mac version of Turbo Tax, and I think the same is true for several others on this thread.

[JohnW152]

Hopefully the TurboTax Help article Troubleshooting TurboTax for Mac Desktop installation and updating issues will be more helpful.  Note that there's a contact link in the article, just in case.

[whodiini]

Article was not very helpful.  I checked, as of today, the latest critical updates of turbotax mac does not fix the blank screen issue.  Judging from the past response from Turbotax of critical issues that affect a small number of people, I would be surprised if this reached the threshold where they would bother to fix it for this year or the next.  Just providing a realistic assessment for those sharing the same issue.

[DaisyDaisy]

I saw the exact same problem in Mac.

How can I move on with this problem? 

[MonikaK1]

I have not encountered this issue with adding stock transactions when using Home & Business for Mac.

Have you tried the workaround reported by @mazh (reporting the stock sale in the Other category), or importing the data?

I am elevating the issue in our Community channel.

Since I haven't been able to replicate the issue with my version, I recommend that you contact TurboTax Support and ask to set up a screen share so the issue can be documented.

@Whodini @DaisyDaisy

[Edited 04/01/24| 11:11am PST] 

[whodiini]

I tested the workaround and it seems to work.  What you do is when you get to the screen where there are 3 choices, the first is the stock/mutual fund sale and if you chose that you get a blank screen - choose the third "Other" and then it asks for a name - enter your brokerage, then the next screen there is a drop down menu.  Choose stock (non-employee), Mutual fund or ETF and proceed to enter the info. It seems to work.  It is more challenging because "other" includes all sorts of other stuff like RSU, options, etc....  But at least it is a way to proceed and bypass the blank screen issue.

Also as reported in this thread earlier, someone did contact Turbotax and replicated the issue. Support was not able to solve it. 

[gabriel_ckb]

I have this same issue and its incredibly inconvenient as I had some late forms arrive and I need to calculate the tax and file the amendment.

- Trying to add a 1099-B on an amended return and the Wages & Income screen is stuck on blank.  

- Macbook Pro, 13-inch, M2, 2022

- Ventura 13.4.1 (c)

This is seriously bugged.  Adding a 1099-B to an amended return is probably a pretty common issue, I'm surprised this hasn't been entered as a bug and fixed by the engineering team.

[gabriel_ckb]

I don't think this work-around is correct.   If you put in your shares as the "Other" category there is no option to Select whether Box A, Box B, or Box C should be checked.  This means the stock transaction may be incorrectly classified on which form it goes into for Schedule 8949.

Everything I put in using "Other..." ends up on  as Box C, "Short-term transactions not reported to you on Form 1099-B" even though these transactions were reported to me on a 1099-B.

This bug seems problematic because the "workaround" puts the transactions on the wrong Box in 8949.

[gabriel_ckb]

I called the customer support, was able to show the issue with 100% repeatability.  Also installed the software on a different mac laptop and it's the same issue.

I asked if they could give me a license for the PC version so at least I could finish my taxes on a Windows PC before the deadline, but the person said my request for a "free" download was rejected. 

I pointed out that it wasn't really a "free download" as I'd already paid for the current Turbotax Premier Mac software.  Which is not working and unable to file the taxes.  Sigh, this might be my last year using this software.  What other alternatives are there?

[mazh]

@gabriel_ckb, you are correct that the workaround is not without flaws. In my situation, I was expecting my numbers to appear in Box E (as it did in years past), but they're now appearing in Box F.  If Turbo Tax gives any control over this, it is not obvious to me at all. I suspect the user has no control which is bad.

(E) Long-term transactions reported on Form(s) 1099-B showing basis wasn’t reported to the IRS
(F) Long-term transactions not reported to you on Form 1099-B

@MonikaK1  do you have any way to bring more attention to this issue within Turbo Tax?

I showed the blank screen issue to a Turbo Tax tech support representative using screen-share on 3/25/24. After trying many things, they could not figure out a way around it and filed a ticket. It's quite disappointing that 2 weeks has past and Turbo Tax has not fixed the issue nor offered a workable workaround to a problem that has been plaguing so many users.

[gabriel_ckb]

@mazh Yeah, not really having other options I'm not sure what to do at this point.

I thought about adding my transactions to another 1099-B from the same company (Charles Schwab) since at least that way they'd be able to show up with the correct box checked on Form 8949 and it doesn't seem in the final return to care about *which* 1099-B the transactions came from.  But after manually entering the transactions to some other form I started noticing some transactions mysteriously disappearing for some reason.  Then I'd re-enter them, and now they would appear as multiple duplicates.  But then disappear entirely again completely after using the interface a little bit more to add more transactions.

I am a software engineer--I think this version of the software is just really buggy.  This seems like programming errors and not something with they system display or things like that.

[gabriel_ckb · Accepted solution]

@mazh I think I found a trick to be able to create a Box A or Box B form without having to Click the "Add More Sales" button.  Here's the procedure.

1.  You can to create the form by importing a TXF with a dummy transaction in it

• TXF is a special file format that can be used to export 1099B transactions from other financial software to TurboTax
• In this case I hacked a TXF file with just 1 transaction in it which goes to category Box B
• It will be imported through a different menu option:  File -> Import -> From TXF Files...
• This will create a Stocks form with 1 dummy transaction in Box B
• From there you can see and edit the new form and add your transactions to it similar to a "Stocks..." form

First - Back up a Copy of your tax file because you don't want to be experimenting on it and possibly break it.

1.  Create a text file with the following and save it with the name test.TXF

V042
AQuicken 2011 for Windows R1
D04/08/2023
^
TD
N711
C1
L1
P100 QCOM
D01/02/2011
D01/15/2011
$1700
$2000
$
^

(this text file basically contains 1 Box B transaction in it which will be imported through the Import TXF... option).  Make sure it was saved as "test.TXF" with a TXF extension.

2.  Go to File->Import->From TXF Files..

3.  Select "Choose A TXF File..." and select the TXF file.

4.  Select Continue...

5.  It will ask "These Documents Are Ready For Import" and it'll have a 1099B with 1 transaction on it. 

6.  Click "Import Now.." then Select "Done" when it shows you've finished importing your info.

7.  Then go back to "Wages & Income", and a new "Untitled" form will be there listed as "Stocks, bonds, etc." and will show "Needs Review"

8.  You can click on "Review" and it'll ask you the name of the bank or brokerage.  Enter whatever you want to call the form as usual.

9.  You can now add 1 sale of your own to that same form (it can even be a temporary dummy sale, this is just to keep the form around now that you've created it).  This will keep the form intact once you remove the imported TXF.

10.  Go to File->Remove Imported Data->TXF File Name (test.TXF) -> Remove All to remove the test.TXF data.

11.  The form should still be there with your 1 dummy transaction in it.  You can now add and edit the form as usual.

If you want to create another form, you can repeat the process with the same file (this assumes you already did Go to File->Remove Imported Data->TXF File Name (test.TXF).  Another option might be to rename test.TXF to something else and import again if that doesn't work.

It's a little bit complicated but it is a way to bypass the blank screen issue and get your form created.

[mazh]

@gabriel_ckb that was an ingenious workaround! I tried it just now, and it worked. The numbers are all the same (as I had hoped), but now the numbers show up correctly in box E (instead of box F). THANK YOU for the workaround and for the detailed steps! The Turbo Tax community owes you a big debt of gratitude.

[beancan]

Thank you! that worked for me!