Import from Financial Institution -- Why does it force me to "Delete Old Data" when importing Spouse's Tax Forms?

[aysoref]

@NotSoTurbo "because that would be a clear indication that TT is not thinking about providing tax prep software that truly is designed with the customer in mind."

In my decades of software engineering, I learned early on that the best software is created by developers who HAVE TO USE THEIR OWN SOFTWARE. Don't get me wrong. Many other software engineers are nice, intelligent and well meaning but they will implement the requirements precisely as given... leading to some disconnects from real life, real customers, real mistaken or plainly wrong requirements.

I do hope that ALL TurboTax personnel [functional managers, project managers, software developers, test engineers, customer support agents, etc. etc. etc.] are REQUIRED to use TurboTax to prepare their own taxes. If they did, many of them would raise internal hell about this problem and the result would benefit customers.

Call me naive... I know in our society you cannot force anyone to prepare their own taxes, rather handing it over to CPAs. Still I can dream...

Hey, TurboTax personnel !! Are you here? Are you reading ? Are you willing to provide mindful and caring feedback ? Do you personally care about losing customers because of this issue ?   Please give us some "proof of [caring] life".

[taxnovice]

I just thought about a scenario where this so called "data integrity" falls apart. Let's say between you and your spouse you have 5 accounts at a financial institution. Two of them are individual (owned by each) and three are joint. The way I have done this is first log in as myself and then import 4 accounts (3 joint and one individual) and then log in second time as spouse and then import their individual account forms. What if I do not unselect the joint accounts in the second attempt and select all 4 of them. Wouldn't it import all three joint accounts the second time - and it won't wipe out previous import because all these accounts now belong to the second user - I do not think there is any checking done to see if a given account number has been imported before. I do not know if this will be the behavior but I suspect it will be - where is then the so called "protection of data integrity"?

[aysoref]

@taxnovice There are many situations and combinations like you and others describe. Given a sufficiently complex software package like TurboTax, its architectural philosophy HAS TO follow a few "first principles" or "axioms", for example:

1 - The most intelligent component of a complex system is the human. Period. End of story.

2 - No software package can anticipate all real life situations

3 - Humans have to be trusted to resolve any real life scenario in the best way, using the software package as a tool

4 - The tool needs to detect as many data inconsistencies as it can, but only warn its users and allow them to make changes. It should never act on such inconsistencies on its own and should never forcefully bypass human decision making (see #1 and #2).         Remember HAL from "2001: A Space Odyssey"

Violating #4 leads to frustration, loss of human confidence in the software and loss of customers.  I have lots of gray hair to support this principle.

[msloss]

I too am very disappointed in the ridiculous closing of this issue as "working as designed."  That just means it was a faulty design.  I had plenty to say at the beginning of this thread but gave up several weeks ago when I found it easier to input my last 1099 manually than wait any longer for this to get fixed. 

If anyone has experience with how any other tax software handles 1099 downloads, please post it here so we know what to purchase next year if TT fails to correct this flaw.

[mb666]

Yes, my wife and I both have individual brokerage accounts at Merrill Lynch, as well as savings accounts at online banks and we file married/jointly. With TT Deluxe desktop, I couldn't download the tax data for both of us. It was easy enough to enter the 1099-INTs manually. But having to manually enter stock trades for one of us was a throwback to another era, a tedious endeavor I don't want to repeat next year.

I hope there is information available next year on whether the operation of downloading tax statements is improved so that it works in a way that satisfies the needs of all customers BEFORE I purchase tax software again. I too am a retired software engineer and couldn't imagine justifying doing this to my customers by saying it "fixes more problems than it causes". It needs meet the needs of the users in all scenarios.

[user17718139457]

All they need to do is compare the account number also. Every account at an instution has a diffemrent account number. Also, why do they always assign the account to the first person? Look at detail data in the inport. It has the last 4 digits of the owner SS nbr.  

Don't the TT workers use TT for their own returns? Oh, they think it is no big deal to enter 1099's manually.  

[marie2023]

I have researched further and have a couple of options that may, or may not, help others in this situation. 

First the online version of TT apparently allows users to attach a PDF file to their filing with the supplemental 1099 information after submitting subtotals by category in the regular income section.  The PDF attachment is not supported in the desktop version nor can you convert your desktop to an online version to submit with an attachment, but a good option if you are using the online version.  Potentially this is an option on the Premier version as well (under "Tools"), I have not upgraded to test, but this is grayed out in Deluxe.

There is an option in the Deluxe version in the income section (to the bottom left of the import section) to upload a TXF file with 1099 data.  The first step is to download your broker statement (with the data not previously imported) in a CSV format (or convert your PDF to a CSV) then convert that file to a TXF file using an online translator.  If you have >=1K lines you need multiple files, see the below link which was informative on this process:  

https://www.reddit.com/r/tax/comments/1ray1f8/how_to_convert_1099b_pdf_to_txf_for_uploading_to/

One caveat, perhaps I used an outdated version, and so was required to edit each uploaded line to address whether these were digital assets (Y/N).  Maybe others will be able to address this finer point, but I was willing to do this work versus starting over again.

Hope this is helpful.

[aysoref]

@marie2023 Thanks for the detailed work arounds, but I cannot imagine subjecting myself to such. It is truly a Via Dolorosa of tax returns. I would rather pay a CPA and use my day for family time.  If I pay for a software package, I expect it to do its job as advertised, in a helpful and intuitive way. TurboTax does not do this as relates to financial imports. The Intuit software engineers need to fix that.

The extremely disappointing answer that "it works as designed" simply says "it behaves as we implemented it". Absolutely true and also absolutely nonsensical, even offensive. Any engineer working in my group who said this would be invited to a polite, heart to heart "come to Jesus" discussion. Inuit management should know better than offending customers with such statements.

[marie2023]

I agree that this should be resolved more efficiently at the source code and even addressed by TT as I have suggested instead of the responding with inaccuracies which delayed our looking for other solutions, I understand your position, to each their own, but I would like to add that I found this process fairly straight forward and quick.  The amount of time it takes to prepare for CPA hand-off (especially for the first year) is more than I am willing to take on personally, for this year anyway.

[AMJ3]

The problem is still happening and for Marcus - where the "OLD" 1099 imports are deleted - even though they were from the joint account holder and have a unique account number (i.e., not old) and the new import is from an individual account that has a completely different account number. 

Problem seems to be fixed for Fidelity.

Software can see the account numbers connected to each 1099 so it would be OK if it said "We see 2 identical account numbers with a 1099 - which one do you want to keep?".  

[aysoref]

@AMJ3 April 12, 2026, 4:30 PM CST. 

I have the latest TurboTax Premier 2025, desktop version for Windows. The problem IS NOT fixed for Fidelity. I ask TurboTax to import ONLY ONE of the several Fidelity accounts I have. It wipes out ALL previously imported Fidelity accounts' data and then imports the only one I asked it to.

It appears Intuit refuses to fix this bug, and they refuse to tell us why.

[AMJ3]

Something to try - after the first batch imports - go into each and change name of institution by one letter - then import next batch.  I suspect that may work.

[aysoref]

@AMJ3 appreciate your workaround idea but let me note two things. (1) you "suspect" this "may" work. If you care, run this experiment then share with this forum the actual behaviour you observed.  (2) For the price I pay TurboTax to get that software package, I should not have to play tricks, run experiments, etc. etc. etc. That software package should just work correctly. Period. End of sentence.

Not only that, but TurboTax personnel should be open, honest, receptive and sympathetic to our collective problem, and should tell us, on this or other forums, their plans to fix this bug.

[titi10402022]

No, changing the bank name in 1099 doesn't work.

[taxnovice]

I think TT caches the userID of the person logging into the financial institution. So next time the same user id is used to download it erases all previous downloads for that user ID. Hence the granularity is at these two levels

Financial Institution -> user ID

It does display the different accounts that the userID is associated with and allows you to choose which accounts you want to download. However this last level is not saved in the cache and hence next time you use the same user ID it just erases all previous downloads for that userID/bank