WARNING! Glitch in software tried to obliterate me on taxes!!!

[CosmicK]

TurboTax makes it incredibly hard to contact a real person unless you paid for the good stuff, so I'm here instead to get the warning out.

I had almost finished my taxes, on the last few pages to getting my $600 refund, when all of a sudden, the site pulls up some stuff for me to fix before it ok's and finalizes everything. Well, it told me I needed to re-enter my one W-2. I figured maybe it just didn't fully make it over to the State tax section after Federal. After all, it was just the one job, and it already contained some information, but was asking for me to fill in a few of the blanks.

I entered my W-2 again, and suddenly, my refund went from $600 back to OWING more than $2,000!!! The site continued to insist that this was correct, and tried over and over to get me to send in my payment information and finalize the transaction.

I knew something had to be wrong, so I went back to the beginning and looked over my entire night's work. Finally, hidden among my collection of jobs for the year, I saw it-- the site had taken my re-entered W-2 and ADDED IT AS ANOTHER FULL-TIME JOB. Once I removed that extra "job" from the list, my refund went back to normal.

What concerns me here is how such a severe glitch in the software is going to take advantage of other people out there. Sure, I knew something was wrong, and eventually found the answer. But for someone who's using online tax software for the first time, or someone who doesn't know what to expect, they can easily be royally screwed out of hard-earned money and potentially their savings account because of this.

My only goal here is that hopefully, someone from IT/development sees this message here, and is able to sound the alarm that something shady is happening within their software, and it needs to be fixed asap.

For reference, I used the basic self-employment software, which cost me $130 all-in. However, the glitch occurred on my regular job's W-2, and had nothing to do with the self-employment portion of the software. Therefore, I suspect it would occur on any version of the TurboTax online software, and anyone using it should be wary. Double, TRIPLE-check all your inputs, and don't just take the site's approval as correct.

[macuser_22]

There is no glitch.    TurboTax was telling you about a possible error on the First W-2.   You said "I entered the W-2 again", so of course you will then have double the income of you did not first delete the first W-2.

[CJ06]

Hello. There is a glitch. This exact thing happened to me. It said I needed to correct some missing info, but when I did it added as a new W2.

[Mvinson]

The same glitch just occurred for me! I was in the final step... it wanted me to make a few reviews. The system basically asked me to confirm info on my W2. Once I clicked next, it added a whole new income amount (under a previous employee name from last year taxes). 

this causes me refund to result in owing taxes! Now that I caught the error and corrected it... my refund is still showing significant off. 

Very concerning. Hope to see this fixed. 

[Anonymous]

Anyone who hits the "file" button without looking at their return to ensure that it looks like it should (doesn't have double your income, etc.) gets what they deserve IMO.   

Glitch or no - you shouldn't be trying to file just because you like the refund number. You need to look at the entire return first!!! 

[Mvinson]

Thanks for your opinion. I am not sure any of us said we did actually click file. The system completed the full return - and in the final review, it asks you to confirm your W-2 info. Instead, your income is doubled and you have to go back and correct everything from the very beginning. The point is that this is a glitch that shouldn't be happening and messing up the entire return. It's a glitch that can be risky given it changes data in the return.