This looks like a bug in TurboTax.  I copied my return and tried changing the 1099-DIV inputs.  If I zero out the value entered in the interview for US government obligations for one of the 1099-DIVs, the taxpayer value that TurboTax computed for MO-A changed by the amount originally entered and the spouse amount changed by twice the amount originally entered.  Since this 1099-DIV was "both of us", I would have expected both the taxpayer and spouse amounts to change by one-half of the amount originally entered.  Most of the other tests that I tried, e.g., changing the taxpayer, spouse, both of us selection for a 1099-DIV, produced incorrect results.  How do I report a bug?

Call in to Customer Support...they will likely request a Diagnostic file for them to check out.

Make sure you have entered everything properly, and the errors are there.

What is the TurboTax phone number? (intuit.com)

Just got off a phone call with TurboTax support.  The rep was pleasant but couldn’t help much.  She said that they don’t have a bug in the system for this issue yet.  She will put the information that I gave her in the notes but there isn’t a way to directly report a bug. 

After much investigation, I have concluded that, for my return, this bug did not change the amount that TurboTax said that I owed to Missouri.  In particular,

The error occurred when I had 1099-DIVs for “both of us” and reported income from US government obligations in the interview.  On my return, TurboTax subtracted the amount entered in the interview from the taxpayer amount on MO-A line 8 and added twice the amount entered to the spouse amount.  Since the taxpayer and spouse amounts are added together later, the total subtraction didn’t change.  

I still consider this a bug since the amounts on MO-A line 8 are not allocated as expected between the taxpayer and spouse.  I do not know if the error could result in an incorrect calculation of tax owed for a different return.  During the investigation, I did see other unexpected behavior with respect to the computation of MO-A line 8 but I haven't figured out what TurboTax was doing for those cases.

Deleted.

Be very careful with this issue.

When it totals  you and your spouse later it might not changing the end amount if the magnitudes of each are similar. My magnitudes are not and it triples the amount in 8b and zeros out the amount in 8a.

I have been trying to report the bug for over a week and they will not accept an email. They just want to download a sanitized file, which will not tell them what they need to diagnose.

My issue would disappear if I manually entered the data from one of the financial institutions (Pershing(Netx). The other institutions were still imported

I just received  a congratulatory email from as I was writing this them that over 500 people have read my post. No kidding it is a bug and has been so for 3 years is what I discovered

Here is a link to my chain of back and forth and no help from them.

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/state-taxes/discussion/re-u-s-government-obligations-software-error/01/3236655#M159197

Or enter the line below in the search box if you do not want to use the link

U.S. government obligation software error

Thank you for pointing out that there are cases where the error does result in a change in taxes owed.

I can confirm that on my return, overriding the values or not overriding the values does not affect the tax owed.  Specifically, on my return, TurboTax computes MO-A 8aY and 8aS incorrectly.  8aY and 8aS carry down to MO-A line 18Y and 18S which are incorrect.   18Y and 18S carry to MO-1040 line 4Y and 4S which are incorrect.  4Y and 4S carry to 5Y and 5S which are incorrect.  MO-1040 line 6 sums 5Y and 5S where the errors cancel out.  On my return, line 5S is negative with or without the error so the income percentages on line 7 are 100% and 0% with or without the error and the remainder of the tax calculations are the same with or without the error. 

I did go back and check my 2021 and 2022 MO returns and there was no US government income for S so the problem that we are seeing would not be triggered.

I'm not sure if the error that you encountered is exactly the same as the one I encountered but in both cases, MO-A is being computed incorrectly by TurboTax. I too spent considerable time trying to figure out what TurboTax was doing and whether or not it resulted in an incorrect computation of taxes owed.  I too was very frustrated that I could not report the problem.

If you import the dividends from a financial institution there is a test you could perform if you feel up to it

Delete the just the dividend importation that is source of 8a-Y column from the list of imported items, leaving the capital gains and all other imported files from other sources untouched.

Manually enter the dividends that were not imported and proceed as you had before in filling in the government obligations.

See if  8aY is still in error.  Manually  entering the data corrected my issue.

Since your end result still comes out in the wash it should make no difference, but it could add to the available data for the developers to locate the problem.

Mine falsely reduced my Mo taxable income by almost $7K.

Great ... lower tax, until it triggers an audit.

I tried the test you suggested and it did correct the problem if I entered any 1099-DIVs that were for both of us and had income from US Government obligations after I had entered (or imported) all other 1099-DIVs.  If, however, I entered a "both of us" 1099 followed by a "taxpayer" 1099, the problem was present.  I think the order of entry may be the important factor here.  

I am able to generate the problem with only manually entered 1099s if I enter them in the "wrong" order.

I haven't done enough testing to know if entering any 1099-DIVs that are for "both of us" last is a workaround in general or only happens to work for the few cases that I tested.

Interesting, so the order appears to have at least some relationship to the appearance of the bug.

I actually suspected that this was a possibility. However, we don't have any government obligations that are held in both of our names, so I have no files to use as an import test.

I have been unable t to find anyway to pass on an email through the customer service channels . The tax expert and customer service path is totally blocked from doing so. They have totally walled of their development team form everyone, including other Intuit employees

I filed a from which apparently is under the Office of the President at Intuit. If they abide by their promise on the complaint form I should get some response back by COB tomorrow. I hope then that they will provide some path that will ultimately get the info to the  development team.

I will try to send the document  I created to you by using the PM function this evening when I have time. We will see if that works or if it is character limited to a small number of characters.

I doubt you will believe the amount of effort I have expended in trying to get TurboTax to address the issue on line 8a. 

If you are interested I could cut and paste most of the correspondence here.

I went from frustrated to way beyond that.

As time went on in this process I started to play around with fictitious returns similar to what you created. I would hand enter the data and I determined the errors have nothing to do with the fact of whether the data is imported or hand entered.

I also sent them an image of one of the fictitious returns by providing them the token to retrieve it.

I found their response to this return to be unbelievable.

"Our TurboTax Team has examined the mock file you provided, but our investigation process necessitates original information from customer software and data issues." 

I found out later in a telephone call what they were even trying to say in their reply.

I determined I can recreate errors of various magnitudes depending on the amounts entered for the Taxpayer or Spouse.

The largest of the errors I discovered has the following from: Enter a dividend owned by the Spouse with a government obligation of for instance $4k, call it Company 1.

Enter a second dividend with a government obligation of for instance $200 owned by the Taxpayer, call it Company 2.

Enter additional dividends that have no government obligation from Company 3, then 4, then 5, then 6 owned by the Taxpayer. The amounts or the ordinary dividends are immaterial for Company's. 3-6. I used $100.

The program multiplies the Spouse's amount by the number of institutions on the 1099DIV list(6). 

Line 8a Spouse on the Mo form will now contain the $4000 multiplied by the number of financial institutions on the list. So $4000 x 6= $24000. The Taxpayer column will be $0.

You play with the magnitudes of the Spouse by just editing the 1099 -DIV forms directly in the forms mode, this way you can quickly test various magnitudes. This allows you to see what the formula is doing in this configuration, as nonsensical as it is.

If you manually replace the $4000 owned by the Spouse on the 1099-DIV with $50 and change the Taxpayer amount to $1000 on their 1099-DIV. Then you see the following result:

$50 x 6=$300 in the Spouse's column.  In the Taxpayer column you see $1000 - the $250= $750. The $250 is the difference between $300 and the $50 that should be in the Spouse's column.

This is why the errors cancel out in many scenarios, because the overage from the incorrect multiplication amount in the Spouse's column is being subtracted in the Taxpayer column. 

However, it fails to cancel if the subtraction of the overage results in a negative number for the Taxpayer column.  I imagine that the program probably has bounds set on every field entry, this one is clearly 0.  At least that makes sense, since you can't get a check for a negative amount.

So when the Spouse's erroneous multiplier cannot be subtracted in full from the Taxpayer column it is limited to 0. 

You can increase your deductions to any multiplier you wish by just adding a financial institutions to the list.

The key to this is that they all must be owned by the Taxpayer not the Spouse or it resets, the multiplier stops at that point the ownership belongs to the Spouse after the initial Taxpayer amount is entered.

The error is not symmetrical. If your reverse everything in my example by changing Spouse to Taxpayer and Taxpayer to Spouse, then the amounts are all correct on 8a. 

I have still been unable to get the Office of the President to pass this case to the development team. That is where the whole chain of emails and phone calls some in.

I thought you might be interested in seeing what I uncovered, and what happens if as a user you are unwilling to provide your actual tax file what it takes to get them to address an error.

Regards,

Glenn

@robtm   Are you around recently?  (maybe not)

You use MO forms.  Do you see/understand what these users are dealing with?

This last post has a lot more details as to how the MO software appears to be screwing up in a Major way.

_______________

@TomD8    Any chance you cross over and work some with MO forms to check this out?

or @xmasbaby0 

I actually posted the message shown above as a Private Message to tjm0xsp-.

When I hit post a message flashed up that said something like "Invalid Certificate" and then it was gone.

I had kept a copy and sent the Private Message again to tjm0xsp-.

So for whatever reason it posted my first private communication to the public forum.

There is nothing contained in it which actually needs to be removed. However,  it would require additional explanation in the areas where I said that I would provide all of the correspondence going back and forth with "The Office of The President" at Intuit.

So for a technology company they sure seem to have a lot of issues from my prospective.

They have tried to close the case because I would not provide my personal tax file.

I did something I view and argued as even better. I created a fictitious tax file with phony name, address and SS# etc..

It contained only manually entered dividends and some that had that had government interest contained in them. Absolutely nothing else on the forms to cloud the issue.

That is how all of the issues became apparent in the calculation for Mo Form A line 8a.

"The Office of The President" has still not forwarded any of the issues I discovered to the developers at this point, due to their process.

In time we will see if they reject the case and ignore the errors I have discovered or not.

I got around the error by entering the financial institution data in a certain order and then manually entering other data.

In my case if I did not perform things in exactly this way I saw the deduction falsely triple in size on the Mo form.

If I did not do so my only option was to override the data. I was warned by a TT advisor that if I did so, they would not guarantee the results. I found this ironic for obvious reasons.

Updating this thread in case anyone else finds it.

I am working on my 2024 taxes now and do not see the title problem that I observed last year.

Note:  I have not done extensive testing.

I spent an untold number of hours speaking with different individuals located in what they refer to as "The Office of the President".

With each new person I started over from scratch.

Where it was left is that they finally acknowledged the problem and fixed the issue when you enter the data "manually".

They did not fix it if you import the data, but said they would look to correct it in the 2024 tax year.

My data files from the financial institutions just came out yesterday.

I imported the data in the order that worked properly last year and it worked properly this year.

I have not tired importing it yet in the order that results in the error. 

Import the spouse first then followed by the taxpayer accounts.

This is how I could create the error at will.

You could add manual entries after that and they would continue with the erroneous multiplication

I intend to try the test tomorrow and see if the bug is still there.

I will let you know.

GC

I just performed a test and TT has not corrected the bug despite their assurances that they would do so for this tax year.

The error is order dependent.

To trigger the error first I import the dividend information from the first financial institution owned by the spouse.

Then I import the data from second financial institutions dividend information, which is owned by the taxpayer.

The dividends owned by the “Spouse” must be the first file imported. This is what triggers the error.

This erroneously doubles the amount in the spouse’s column and zeroes out the amount in the taxpayer column.

So, on Mo line 8a the proper deduction is erroneously doubled in the Spouse’s column and the taxpayer‘s column is zeroed out.

If you import dividends from another financial institution owned by the “taxpayer” with government obligations it triples the error.

I believe if you had 10 financial institutions it would multiply the spouse’s column buy 10 x the proper amount. The actual amounts in the imported data from the “taxpayer” is irrelevant, it zeroes them out in the taxpayer column and multiplies the amount in the spouse’s column by however many financial intuitions you import data from. Import data from ten financial institution and you get 10x the error.

I went back and forth with them for months and despite TT assurances they did not fix the bug.

Each time I had to demonstrate the error and was told they would pass it on to the development team and correct it.

The development team corrected the error if you entered the data manually but not if it was imported.

I repeatedly emailed them and was told it would be addressed for 2024.

I am thinking of just reporting it to the Mo Attorney General’s Office since Mo is the one being shortchanged by a false deduction and TT appears not to be willing to devote resources to correct it.

It passes all of the TT error checks and the electronic file is submitted to Missouri as a valid return. The bug has now been there for at least 4 years.

@xmasbaby0 

This is a strange one with a long running, multi-year error for MO MFJ folks.

The last post here.....seems to have found the problem is the order in which you import each spouse's own financial info from a financial provider.

Maybe you can escalate it thru one of the Moderators offline??

I worked with the Office Of The President at TurboTax for months and more than six people in that office.

They closed the case after they fixed the issue if you manually enter the data with the main error of importing the data still there. They closed it  despite my protests.

I emailed them yesterday with the case number in the heading and received a reply saying the case was closed.

I am done with TT.

This error creates a grossly inflated deduction and they have not fixed it or notified past users of the issue.

I think the MO taxing authorities is who might be interested in their approach to failing to address the false deduction. Even when I spoon fed them how to reliably recreate the error at will.

I have had this problem with the MO-A for as long as I can remember.  I go back through each 1099DIV or INT I have entered and can never come up with the amount that is shown on MO-A.  Capital gains never transfer over either so not sure why the source of taxpayer or spouse is even asked.  I have reported to Turbotax and never gotten a response.  They spend few resources on making certain the state tax returns are correct.  

I have given up on TT.

I spent hours and hours with various individual in the group call "Office Of The President" at Intuit.

I showed them how I could trigger the error at will and how I could get around it if I imported things in a certain order.

The errors are significant when it comes to calculating the Federal obligation portion of gains.

Last years whether your imported the data for your Federal obligations or entered it manually it calculated it improperly "if" you entered or imported the Spouse's data first.

I did appear to work in my case if you import or manually entered or imported  the taxpayer's data first followed by the spouse's. So it was order dependent.

This years returns appear to work if manually entered, but the error is still there if you import the data with the spouse's data first.

They assured me multiple times they would address it to correct the errors for the 2024 tax year software, but they did not. I was left dumbfounded that I had spent the time thorough trial and error to given them a perfect test case on how to create the error. I had various people call and I would allow them to remote in to a fictitious John Doe return that I created.  I would demonstrate the error. and then switch the order of the entry and how it would calculate the value correctly. Even doing this they still have the error in this years software.

I am done with TT because I don't trust their calculations on state returns. I found other errors on the Federal return previous to this.

I reported what I had gone through to the Attorney General and DOR of Missouri.  I described that TT is failing to correct known errors on the Mo tax calculations that shortchange the Mo DOR.  I guess we will see if they do anything or not.

Good Luck