Unable to Transmit Return but paid fees already

Oof. Join the club, I'm having a similar issue. I just posted here: https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/the-saga-continues-subtitle-turbotax-not-loading/00/2593007

TurboTax on Twitter directed me to follow this post (which of course is no help whatsoever): https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-topics/help/why-am-i-getting-an-oops-there-was-a-drop-in-our-connec[product key removed]ge/00/2442340

There could be a number of reasons why you are having problems with transmission. I know you have called customer service a few times and are still having this issue. I'm going to suggest a few things here to make sure we have exhausted all efforts and tried things that have worked for others. 

Please take a look at these TurboTax FAQ's here and also this one here pertaining to transmission and server issues. 

You're giving me the generic answer of having to clear your cookies. No that does not work. I've tried that MANY times in several browsers on several devices and in incognito mode. I can't even click to print my hard forms to mail them as it crashes as well.

Hey dcluster. Looks like we are experiencing the SAME exact issue. So this is DEFINITELY on turbotaxes end.

Question for you, since you mentioned adding in your crypto transactions. About how many transactions do you have? Is it also above 1K? 

I still have a very strong suspicion that if there is a HIGH number of transactions, TurboTax is timing out when trying to generate the tax forms. Based on the fact that the WebUI looks like it connects to an AWS instance (judging from the URL) and it probably craps itself trying to generate a big tax form, guessing because they're probably using the lowest cost instance possible.

@NathanMLim that's my suspicion as well. I think I actually did hit over 1k transactions. It's odd that everything worked pretty okay until that last step of trying to submit the returns for filing. But I'm completely stuck now. I can't download any of the forms or even select "Clear & Start Over" under Tax Tools. Clicking on the Documents portion for 2021 shows nothing also (which seems to support your point about not being able to generate a report).

If I could just get my P/L number of crypto transactions, I'd just start over and enter that as one figure - not even worry about connecting the various API keys. I'm tempted to look elsewhere, but I'm already out $180 so I'd prefer to finish it with TT

@NathanMLim I just got mine to go through! Not sure if they're working on a fix, but I was finally able to submit.

I got about three Transmission errors at the very last step, but I just kept retrying and they were finally sent. If you see this, give it a try now (8pm EST). 

Glad you were able to transmit it...tried 5 times for me and still no dice. Did you make any changes to your forms before submitting?

Only thing I did was go back to the beginning to make sure my selection for the Economic Impact Payment was corrected. Gave myself a heartache because the “oops!” error started appearing again. I did just try to let the screen sit if it went blank instead of hitting any kind of refresh. 

Another difference I noticed was actually being able to save the PDFs of my return by navigating to “Print Center” on the left under Tax Tools. That hadn’t worked before. My plan was to mail the hard copies if the site kept crashing. Are you able to do that at least? Mine was like 700 pages 

@NathanMLim how'd you make out? Were you able to transmit your returns?

Sadly still NO!

I went back through the forms from the beginning again just as you did and still the same result. When I get to the final step where I can click to view forms, it is still saying turbotax is having trouble generating the return.

I might just end up asking for a refund from TurboTax and trying to do my taxes elsewhere.

@NathanMLim jesus, that’s frustrating. Don’t use the refund request link, they’ll just deny it right away (saying that their “guarantee” doesn’t cover the online version. Even though you can’t use it!). I hit the roof when I got that email yesterday. 

After that happened, I called again and got put through to a supervisor named Kenya (I think). She had me run a program called Glance so she could see exactly what was happening and said she submitted a refund request for me - remains to be seen if I actually get that or not. My case number was [phone number removed]. Maybe you can give that to whoever you talk to so they can read the notes on the case. Should help to save a lot of headache having to explain everything all over again. I spent over an hour on the phone with the supervisor yesterday before she accepted that it was a TT error (having to go through and show her using different browsers, clearing cookies, and all that goofy stuff). 

I definitely won’t be using TT again next year, that’s for sure 

@NathanMLim they seriously don’t make this easy. Case number is 

149- - -282- - -5209 (no hyphens)

OMG I want to kill myself! 😡

I had TurboTax give me a call from clicking the Help button and they said they are not able to pull up your case number since it is not associated with me. She then proceeded to tell me she cannot do anything beyond a screen share session and then sent me to their support number  1---888----777-----3066

I'm on hold with them now but am not hopeful I will get anything resolved.

What the hell. That's so insanely frustrating. I would just start asking to speak with a supervisor straight off the bat, not even bother trying to explain the situation to the lower level support. They obviously don't want to listen. It makes me want to reach through the phone and shake them to make them listen.

If you get someone competent on the phone, ask if they're familiar with the Glance App. Any time I tried doing a screenshare session, it would just disconnect every time I went to refresh the page and the "oops!" error appeared. It just severs any kind of connection with TT; with the Glance app, they will be able to see everything on your screen so just be aware of that.

Update: STILL DO NOT HAVE MY TAXES FILED! (But there's progress) 

Got off the phone with their IT support who was knowledgeable about the underlying issue. She confirmed my suspicion that TurboTax sends info from their servers to an AWS instance on the backend to generate the forms and she stated that the TurboTax Online web-app will struggle with 500+ transactions (DING DING! I was right!) So she had me remove the transactions and try to generate a .tax file where I could then download and redo my taxes through a locally installed application (which they had to send me a specific code in order to download/install). She had me go through a couple of steps but I'm still having troubles even generating a .tax file for 2021. I had already spent 2 hours on the phone, so I had to step off, so we couldn't go any further. But, she said I should be able to start from scratch and get them actually generated through the locally installed app since it doesn't involve AWS anyways. 

The take-away here is that TurboTax needs to be up-front about how many transactions they can handle <500 (or scale up the AWS instance if the account has lots of transactions) 

If they do not address this issue immediately, I bet in the next coming weeks (as the deadline rolls closer) they're going to get a HUGE inflow of other apes/retards young investors that spent the pandemic day-trading complaining and complaining to all their friends how TurboTax cannot handle their taxes!

Oh man, progress! Thank god you were able to connect with someone who knows about the issue. That’s at least some relief and validation that you’re not losing your mind. 

And you totally called it! Not even sure how you connected the dots for the AWS bit but good work. Definitely agree that their customer service is about to have a bad time with the influx of crypto nerds trying to file before the deadline. Hopefully, but I know they’re not, they’re taking measures to communicate with their employees about the issue and taking steps to resolve it. 

Hopefully our threads and messages will provide at least some insight to those who stumble across this in the future when they run into this same issue. It’s not much but it’s better than the endless loop of “clear your cookies and cache, try a new browser” etc. etc. 

Glad you at least made some progress today though. Almost there!

The fact that TurboTax uses AWS is apparent in the URL. Also most of the internet uses AWS anyways--I also work with tech and use AWS often. When I send a process to AWS and it hits something like  memory error the process will just die. Given TurboTax is failing to generate the tax forms when there's a high number of transactions, I'm fairly certain the TurboTax software is hitting a memory limit. (This is more or less confirmed by the IT person I was speaking with who said the web-app cannot handle more than 500 transactions).

I'm going to try to confirm this theory by watching the memory usage when I try to generate my tax forms on the locally installed application, since this shouldn't be using AWS at all and use my local compute resources. If all goes well with using the locally installed app, then I'm right and TurboTax needs to give us "power" users the ability to download the software to generate our tax forms locally. If I'm wrong about the memory issue then the TurboTax software itself may just be messing up the imports somewhere and I need to double check every single line manually. In either case, I'll report back what I find. But I REALLY should not have to be jumping through this many hoops myself (as a paying customer) to figure out problems with their software. 

you are spot on

the high level of transactions on 1099 B is creating the issue

i also posted on the other forum

Once you change it to a summary from individual transactions everything works

Hey @jagg1  How did you switch to summary form instead of individual transactions?

You may elect to report summary information.  Your brokerage statements should include a summary of your transactions, grouped by sales category, for example, Box A short-term covered or Box D long-term covered. You will enter the summary info instead of each individual transaction.

1. Open or continue your return and search for stock sales.
2. Select the Jump to link in the search results
3. Answer Yes to Did you sell stocks, mutual funds, bonds, or other investments in 2021?
   • If you land on Your investment sales summary, select Add more sales 
4. On the OK, what type of investments did you sell? screen, select Stocks, Bonds, Mutual Funds, then Continue
5. On the Let's import your tax info screen, select I'll type it myself
6. Step through the interview and select Sales section totals when prompted to choose how to enter your sales
7. You will now be able to enter the total proceeds (sales) and cost basis, along with the sales category. Refer to your 1099-B for the amounts and category. When finished, select Continue
8. You can add additional sales totals by selecting the Add another sales total on the Review your sales section totals screen.

If you choose the option to enter a summary instead of entering each sale, The IRS requires that you mail a copy of the brokerage statement listing the individual sales.

If you e-file, TurboTax will produce an IRS Form 8453. You print the IRS Form 8453 and attach the brokerage statement(s) to it.

If you file by mail, attach the statement(s) to the back of your tax return, after all the forms and schedules.

In either case, click the mailing instructions link in the message at the bottom of the TurboTax page and follow the instructions that it displays.

So based on the information in this thread, would the best course of action be to use the downloaded app instead of the online version? I'm in a similar situation where the account is locked for the same reason, despite using the consolidated import. Instead of spending time on the phone I'd rather just jump into the local app and start again. Otherwise, this would end my 20 years run with turbotax.

The best and quickest way is to delete the transactions and put in a summary instead.  

I used a summary from the start which only has 80 lines. For me, it crashed on miscellaneous income from staking rewards. The last entry caused the system to choke and now I'm stuck on the oops connection error.

@TatTBTX The summary of transactions shouldn't have 80 lines - it should have one for each type of trade that you did.  Your transaction summary should be at the front of your 1099-B or you'll have to go through and pick out the total amount for each type of transaction and then enter that.