Medicare Premiums, in Both Business section and Personal section?

[MAJ]

I’m using the Home & Business 2018.  When using the step-by-step format, I see an amount in Personal > Deductions and Credit > Medical > Medical Expenses.  I see that it includes the premiums for Medicare Part B that were deducted out of my social security payments.  Even though I didn’t enter that amount in this section.

These premiums were also included also included in Business > Business income and Expenses > Less common Business Situations > Self-Employed Health Insurance (which I think end up in Schedule C).

Are these premiums supposed to show up in both places?

[Bsch4477 · Accepted solution]

Your error was in reporting your Medicare premiums when you entered your SSA-1099. When you did that the program automatically sent that amount to your Sch A. Correct it by going back to that form and deleting the amounts subtracted from your social security payments.

[VolvoGirl]

Medicare plan B payments are qualified as Self-employed medical insurance premiums and should be entered under Business instead of in the Social Security Benefits entry area.

[MAJ]

It appears that there is an error in the program as described by two other posters shown below:

The Medicare premiums that are paid from your Social Security benefits are shown on your Form SSA-1099. The screen where you enter your SSA-1099 has boxes for entering the Medicare premiums. But if you enter them there, TurboTax will automatically include the premiums in the medical expenses on Schedule A. If you want to use the Medicare premiums for the self-employed health insurance deduction on Schedule 1 line 29, do not enter them on the SSA-1099 screen, even though they are on your SSA-1099. Enter them only under business expenses.

The current version of TurboTax Home & Business for Mac "double dips" the premium paid for Medicare if it's itemized as a Social Security direct payment. To fix this I had to show a negative payment equal to what Social Security paid for my personal medical premiums so that the deduction could be taken only for the business. The underlying code for TurboTax needs to be corrected to guide the user through this without having to perform a kludge.

It seems like the instructions for entering the premiums in the personal section should be clarified so that it isn't necessary to read the "Learn More" section, and/or the program shouldn't automatically include those premiums in Schedule A unless appropriate.

[VolvoGirl]

That second paragraph you posted was wrong even if they got it to work.  You just need to delete it from the SSA-1099 entry and only enter it under self employment.

[MAJ]

What's wrong with it?

[VolvoGirl]

You don't need to enter a negative payment to delete it from personal deductions.  Just delete it from the SSA-1099 entry screen.

[MAJ]

OK, Thanks