In reading the revised instructions for Form 8615, the IRS requires taxpayers electing to modify their tax on unearned income based on the child's parents tax to make a statement on the form that states "election to modify the tax of unearned income." The instructions for Form 8615 say that this can be made on the return (on line 7 or at the top of Form 8615) or on an attachment filed with the return. However, Turbotax is NOT doing this on their forms. When I print them for mailing (which I have to do because my child is under age 16), this statement does not exist. Should I be handwriting this onto the return so it follows the instructions? Why isn't Turbotax doing this?
Thanks, but that is not on my forms. I printed out the forms that Turbotax instructed me to mail in (I have to mail because my child is under 16) and nowhere is this language included in my forms to file.
In fact, that box you have on the form above Line 7 does not even exist on my Form 8615 that I printed to mail.
It's an oversight then, but I would not worry about it. It could also be an IRS oversight if the form specification schema did not allow for line 7 verbiage to be included. TurboTax cannot include anything that the IRS computers are not also programed to accept.
Should I just type it in or handwrite it in myself? Otherwise, how else would the IRS know that I am making this election, other than doing the math? Seems as though the IRS has updated its instructions for Form 8615 but they are still using the old 8615 Form on their website. Where did you get your updated Form 8615?
Include a statement if you want, but I have not heard of any IRS problems with this. The IRS does not process mailed tax returns, there are clerks that enter mailed returns into the main IRS processing computer for processing and they tend to disregard anything hand written on the tax rerun. But it would not hurt anything to add it.
The 8615 was very late in being released because of those tax law changes, so some things might have been overlooked. If the IRS schema called for that statement then I am sure the TurboTax developers would have adhered to the schema (schemas used to be publicly available but 2 years ago the IRS restricted them to to IRS account holders with a login.) so there is no way to check what was actually specified.