It seems that there are some serious bugs in the TurboTax software this year. When I completed my federal return and proceeded to the state return, upon importing all of my federal income information, my federal refund rolling calculation decreased by about $750, and my state refund dropped by about $200. This was just simply carrying over the same information that was already input for my federal filing. I continue on, expecting that some part of the state filing will adjust the refunds back. This never happens, so then I proceed to review my state filing. Now it is asking me to confirm my HSA contributions on my W-2, except that I did not have any contributions to my HSA in 2020. I skip over this and decide to come back to it. Then I reach questions about 1099-NEC and 1099-R filings that do not apply to my 2020 return, but were both filed on my 2019 return.
At this point, I am pretty confident that something was not right, so clear the entire return and start over. I go through the entire process again, and once again, when I finish federal and move on to import my income information into my state filing, the refund calculator drops down again to the same numbers I had the first time around. Feeling confident that this must be correct after receiving the same results twice, I accept my fate and move on, following the same exact procedure as the first time around. I wrap up state, and move into Review once again, and once again I am being asked the same questions about HSA contributions and 1099-NEC and 1099-R. So I go back and comb through all of my information, determined to find out why I am being asked these questions again. I review my income section, starting with my W-2 information. When I get to Box 12, the amount I see is correct, but the code has been changed from D (401K contribution) to W (HSA contribution). So I change it back to D, and then all of the sudden my federal and state refunds go back to their original amount. At this point I'm extremely annoyed, as I am paying for a service with a 100% Accurate Calculations Guarantee and a Maximum Refund Guarantee, and it has almost cost me an extra $1000 due to what I can only presume is a bug in the back end that is causing less than 100% accurate calculations. With the finish line in sight for the second time now, and eager to not make it a third time, I continue on. I review the rest of my income, and everything now appears to be correct. I confirm there is no 1099-R and no 1099-NEC (formerly 1099-MISC) income showing, so I go back to Review again. I am still being asked to fill in information for both a 1099-R and 1099-NEC. I have the option to continue without addressing it, but now I'm running the risk to being audited because of phantom data that may be filled in on my 2020 return that should not be there. The payer information matches the information from my 1099-R and 1099-MISC filings for 2019, so it seems I have run into yet another bug where the program is referencing old data from last year's filing.
Doing taxes is never fun. Doing your taxes twice (yes, two full times from start to end) and not being able to complete them due to buggy software that I am paying to use, that is a nightmare. For the last four years, TurboTax has taken the headache out of filing my taxes, but this year it has been nothing but a headache. This will be the last year I use TurboTax, and that is assuming they fix the issues above to keep my business one last time.
