Why does the review of my taxes show "Dividend Income Worksheet: Payer has too many characters."

[darthchicken]

In the final review before submitting my Iowa taxes, I get a prompt telling me that the Dividend Income Worksheet has too many characters, and it's highlighting the suffix field - which is blank.  It appears that it's pulling the information on the state information worksheet from the Personal Worksheet on the federal side (which is also blank in this field).

I cannot submit my taxes to the state with this error - turbotax will not let me proceed until the error is fixed, but there are no characters typed into the suffix field to make it have "too many characters"

[Beagle60]

I have the same problem. The field is blank but the program thinks there is something in the field.  Turbo Tax needs to fix this immediately.

[darthchicken]

Glad I'm not the only one!  I saw a fix came through today, but it wasn't this one unfortunately.  Still stuck!

[mlblaker]

I have the same issue with the Iowa state return.  I'll guess I'll have to wait to see how to resolve this issue before I can file my taxes.

[huntdan · Accepted solution]

mine was a vanguard issue, go into your dividend section and shorten the vanguard name.  

[darthchicken]

I just spent about an hour on the phone with a very helpful and patient Intuit employee, who saw your post as we were talking.  In my case, it was Fidelity - but same issue.  Fidelity goes by "National Financial Services LLC", shortening the name to "National Financial Services" on the 1099-DIV form fixed the error.

[Beagle60]

I had to shorten the name of several of my payers of interest and dividends, but it worked. Turbo Tax should not allow one to put more characters in at the time of entry rather than making you figure this out after the fact. Very disappointed. My return was filed 9 days later because of this issue.  Thanks for sharing the solutions.

[Iowadog]

The individual who pointed out that National Financial Services has too many characters on the 1099 DIV form is correct!  We have wasted days trying to figure this out and we shortened the payer name as suggested, and the problem was solved. In the spirit of recognizing someone who actually solved the problem, I suggest that user get free Turbo Tax services for a period of five years.  This was a problem in the Iowa Tax return completeness review.  Turbo Tax should get on it immediately!!!!!

[klroehr]

Thanks much to those of you who troubleshot this one--I had a couple of Thrivent funds that pulled through as too long.  Shortened to logical abbreviations and it worked, but this does indeed seem like a significant gap with the Iowa state return.

[Ender1337]

The Iowa Information Worksheet is giving me troubles on the field for my suffix (which is blank since I don't have a suffix in my name).  Is that where you're seeing it?

[klroehr]

Yes-for some reason it highlights the suffix part of the information page, but you actually need to go into the dividend forms and shorten fund/payer names-completely different form than what it shows highlighted. It’s frustrating, but I’m glad that’s all it took! Good luck!

[Ender1337]

That did the trick!  It was the same character-limit issue with Fidelity ("National Financial Services LLC") that other users reported.  Don't know why TT redirected me to that unrelated field, but I was able to manually navigate to the Dividend sheets.  Thanks!

[OK dabe]

I also fixed that problem by shorting Vanguard Marketing Corporation. I dropped the Corporation and it worked.

[Yepitsme]

I had the same issue, Iowa return, went in and changed "American Enterprise Investment Inc." to Ameriprise Financial, and that cleared the issue about the dividend income worksheet; still working to resolve the issue of the form thinking there is something in the suffix field when it is blank.

[Yepitsme]

update: finally just put cursor in the suffix field shown on the Iowa form the review brought up, and hit delete/backspace until the cursor moved to the far left of the field. That cleared the problem.