Form 2210 Line 19 Column (a) calculation error

[Makers]

Form 2210 Line 19 Column (a) should be the sum of all estimated tax payments and tax withholdings through 7/15/20. I made estimated tax payments on 4/10 and 6/10 and they accurately appear on the "Tax Payments Worksheet", but only the payment from 4/10 is being included in the aforementioned calculation. The payment from 6/10 was not included. In fact, the 6/10 payment isn't reflected in any column on Line 19.  As a result TT isn't calculating the underpayment penalty correctly. Is TT aware of this issue? When will it be fixed. Ironically the calculation was correct when I last saved my return earlier this month, but downloading program updates today seems to have introduced this error. 

[Makers]

How can I confirm whether or not TT is aware of this issue?

[Anonymous]

I, too, have encountered this very same error!  Likely an error made in re-working the code for Form 2210 in order to deal with special 2020 situation of postponing Federal tax due dates from 4/15 to 7/15, effectively "merging" both 1st and 2nd quarters together into a single period for underpayment/overpayment calculation purposes; I think they got the withholding portion of line 19 correct, but messed up for the estimated tax portion.

Any idea/feedback/responses regarding when to expect this might be fixed?

[Makers]

Right. Withholdings make it to Line 19 correctly, but not second quarter tax payments. Reporting total payments made thru 7/15 as a single payment is a workaround, but I can’t imagine the bug itself not being fixed, or at the very least instructing users to combine estimated payment entries as outlined above. 

[Anonymous]

After fiddling with various ways of entering the Est Tax payment amount on TurboTax's "internal" Tax Payments Worksheet, I found the following workaround to be fairly straightforward and easy to implement:

In order to have the correct amount appear in column (a) of line 19 of Form 2210, the list of Fed Est Tax payments entered/recorded for TurboTax's "internal" Tax Payment Worksheet is deliberately "tweaked" in a certain way, carefully maintaining the correct Total of such payments.  Specifically, what would have been the second entry in the list of payments on that Worksheet gets recorded as a pair of payments, in the following amounts: $0 and the true amount of the payment.  This pair of payments then become the second and third
entries in the list of Fed Est Tax payments on that Worksheet.  (The essential "trick" seems to be make the second entry in the list of Fed payments on the worksheet be a zero-value "throwaway" entry,  because it will be ignored by the calculation error.  It's sort of analogous to how the second column of Section A of Form 2210 is not used, or ignored, due to combining the first 2 quarters of 2020 into the first column of that form.)

For example, in my case, an actual Fed Est Tax payment made on 6/15/20 in the amount of $2,300 is recorded as a payment of $0 (as the second entry in the list) and another payment of $2,300 (as the third entry in the list) , both on the same date. 

[Makers]

Yes, but this will cause your underpayment penalty to be artificially higher than it should be. That is, if you made your second quarter payment in June as you would in a normal year, but report it as part of  your third quarter payment made in September, your penalty will be calculated as if you made the second payment three months later than you actually did. Since the underpayment penalty is calculated based on the dates estimated payments are made, the only way to get an accurate result is to get credit for payments made the day they were made. As I read line 19, the IRS will give you credit for all payments made prior to July 15 as if on time and therefore a penalty will only accrue from July 15 forward if your accrued payment in column (a) lags that of Line 18. 

[NCperson]

maybe it is stated within the thread, but the simple workaround is to combine all payments made prior to 7/15/20 in one line.  

[Makers]

Agreed. So why doesn't TT do this rather than ignore the additional estimated tax payments? 

[NCperson]

not sure if it is a bug or somehow based on the IRS requires the form to be filled out. 

it 'feels like' a bug. 

[Makers]

Clearly a bug. Line 19(a) asks for the total of all estimated and withheld taxes paid through July 15, but the program fails to include second quarter estimated payments.

[Anonymous]

Makers point about messing up one's proper penalty amount is true IF the dates associated with the payments listed on the Tax Payment Worksheet are not the true dates.  But on that Worksheet I am reporting the true/correct dates with the true/correct amounts for each of the actual Fed Est Tax payments that I made, and the Form 2210 line 19 amounts for the 3 period columns are each calculated by TurboTax correctly, when I include an "extra" zero-valued (fictitious) payment (for a date within the 1/1/20 thru 7/15/20 period for the first column) as the SECOND entry in the list of payments on the worksheet.

In other words, suppose my actual Fed Est Tax payments for the four normal quarterly periods were actually as follows (in chronological order):

     <date1>   <amount1>

     <date2>   <amount2>

     <date3>   <amount3>

     <date4>   <amount4>

Instead of entering them exactly as shown above, I deliberately make the following entries on the Tax Payments Worksheet:

     <date1>   <amount1>

     <date2>   0

     <date2>   <amount2>

     <date3>   <amount3>

     <date4>   <amount4>

Each of the non-zero payment entries still has its true/correct date and true/correct amount, the entries are still in chronological order, and their total is still true/correct.  But there's a zero-valued "extra" entry in the SECOND position in the list.   The calculations made by TurboTax for the line 19 amounts on Form 2210 seem to completely ignore that particular entry, yet seem to use each of the other non-zero entries properly, with the desired true/correct results appearing on line 19. 

At least, this is the "workaround" that is working for me.  YMMV 

[NCperson]

while I agree that you must provide the exact dates of the payments to get the correct penalty, that is not true for payments prior to July 15, 2020.  Since penalties only occur after that date, no matter what date prior to July 15, 2020, including combining multiple payments that occurred prior to that date, will not change the calculation. 

[Makers]

Thanks for your very helpful input, RWRieterJr and NCperson!