Tax due amount suddenly increases after 'federal review' screen

[ahmadka2]

I'm seeing this weird issue that when I cross the 'Federal Review' screen, and reach the start of State taxes screen, my total tax due suddenly increases by about $900. Doing some debugging the issue seems to be coming from the Federal > Wages & Income screen. On the screen, the amount shown for 'Investments and Savings' apparently increases, which causes the total tax due to increase.

To reproduce this issue, I removed majority of from brokerage forms (1099-B, 1099-DIV) from under 'Investments and Savings', then re-added them. Once done, the income shown on main 'Wages & Income' screen is $17405. Then I keep clicking Next, etc., until I cross the 'Federal Review' screen and have the tax due amount increased. Now when I come back to 'Wages & Income' screen, I see the $17405 has been replaced with $21632. The numbers inside the 'Investments and Savings' section remain the same, before and after. But their total displayed outside in the 'Wages & Income' screen changes.

Before:

After:

I've reproduced the above several times, and it keeps happening repeatedly. I wanted to reset my return completely so that I can start from scratch, but I'm also not able to do this since I've already paid.

[DawnC]

Save your return and view it (you can view your entire return since you have already paid) both before and after and see what changes on your actual tax return.   When you go through the review, are you making any changes?  

[ahmadka2]

@DawnC ... okay, I did some more investigation, and I believe this is definitely some sort of bug in TurboTax's online interface at least, and possibly also in the calculations.

Here's my findings:

1) I initially thought maybe it's some issue with my TurboTax data for 2024 tax filing. Since I had already paid, I couldn't 'start over'. I then created a new Intuit account and created a new 2024 tax return from scratch via this new account. Even in this new account, the symptoms I mentioned above were the same: the tax due number suddenly increases after crossing 'Federal Review' screen with me doing no additional change. While doing this, I was also on the phone with TurboTax support for 1.5 hours to try and see if she can help. But since both account's behavior was the same, the agent in the end told me it's likely that the $4924 calculation is correct as it's a double confirmation that the amount is the same, and I should be okay filing my return. So I filed my return earlier today, hoping this is behind me.

But now based on your suggestion, I used the second account's tax filing process to do more digging.

2) As I said earlier, the tax due number increases when the screen transitions from Federal Review to State taxes pages, and this is happening in the second account too. During this page transition, the tax due number increases. If however, I avoid going to State taxes and directly jump to 'Review' section (using the bookmarks on the left of the screen), the tax due number does NOT change !!!, i.e. it remains at $4093 tax due for me.

3) I finalized my return in the second account too, and then compared the PDFs as you suggested, both with the $4093 (by directly jumping to 'Review') and $4924 (by going from 'Federal Review' to state taxes) tax due versions. Turns out both PDFs are exactly the same. They both mention the higher $4924 tax due amount. This is true even for the case when I jump directly to 'Review' screen and the tax due amount on the screen shows $4093 for me. So this is a mismatch between what the screen is telling me, and what the PDF is telling me, which means it's a bug somewhere.

Since I've already filed my tax return based on the agent's suggestion, I'm now unsure which total is correct and which is incorrect.

[ThomasM125]

What you need to do is review the entries on your tax return one by one and verify that they are correct, especially with regard to your interest, dividends and investment gains and losses. The interest and dividends are listed on schedule B and the investment sales on schedule D and form 8949. 

You should do this anyways before you file your tax return. Compare the entries on your tax return with the source documents, 1099 forms,K-1 schedules and other tax documents. If everything checks out then your tax return should be accurate in spite of what may appear on certain summary schedules in TurboTax.