Year over year income comparison after completing Wages and Income

[Fish5]

At the conclusion of filling out the Wages and Income section, in comparing income year to year, why are last year's tax-exempt dividends listed as interest, but this year's is listed with the dividends? On the left for 2021, tax-exempt dividends are included in the 2021 Income Summary as Interest on 1099-INT, whereas the amount for 2022 on the right is included in the Dividends on1099-DIV section. The same was true in comparing the income last year between 2021 and 2020.

[RobertB4444]

Tax exempt dividends are reported on 1099-DIVs and tax exempt interest is reported on 1099-INTs.  If your dividends were reported on a 1099-INT last year then your broker made an error and sent you the wrong form.

@Fish5 

[Fish5]

Thanks much!

[Fish5]

Thanks for the input so far. The brokerage refers to the form as a Consolidated Form 1099, and it includes the information from the 1099-DIV, 1099-MISC and 1099-INT.  The entire document is 26 pages, even though this is a pretty modest or middle of the road account. The numbers appear very clearly on TurboTax as they do on the Summary Box listing Dividends and Distributions, Summary of Proceeds, Gains & Losses, Adjustments and Withholding, Miscellaneous Information, Section 1256 Contracts, and Interest Income, with all of this summarized in two pages before they go into the detailed breakdown. This is from a pretty large, national brokerage firm. The numbers appear to me to be treated appropriately on the 1040 return, page 1. It is just on this Summary page at the end of this section of TurboTax. To me it seems more likely a hitch in the TurboTax program rather than the brokerage firm or how it was downloaded. 

[DawnC]

Are you saying the numbers are correct on Form 1040, but they are in a different spot on the summary page?    TurboTax lumps some numbers together, so maybe the category on the summary is interest and dividends?  

[Fish5]

I will try to clarify. We of course have made almost nothing in interest recently, do get a little tax-exempt dividend income from municipal bond funds. When I look back at the program for 2021, for Interest on 1099-INT, on the L for 2020 is $2,098 and $0 on the R for 2021. For 2021, we had $0.36 in interest income.  On the next line, when I look at the summary page for 2021, on the R, it reports for dividends on 1099-DIV $6,241 which is the sum of the total ordinary dividends and exempt-interest dividends.  For 2021, now it reports on the L for 2021 for interest on 1099-INT as 1,585, and it lists on the R $1 for 2022. For 2022, we had Interest Income of $0.87 and exempt-interest of $1,581.38. On this summary page on the next line, for Dividends on 1099-DIV has $6,112 which is the sum of the total ordinary dividends and exempt-interest dividends. 

[RobertB4444]

So, to be clear, the program is showing interest from 2022 on the 2021 summary in the comparison?  Because that is the only thing that sounds wrong to me on what you have written here?

@Fish5 

[Fish5]

No, sorry if I was not clear. It seems that on my 2021 the program broke out out interest and tax-exempt dividends one way, then when moved to the l side for comparison, it broke it out in a different way. I suspect the 2022 interest is being treated one way this year but will be broken out another way next year. Again, what is listed in the 1040 preliminary tax return seems spot on per the 1099, so I suspect while it looks funky to me, it is probably doing things correctly in the end.

[PatriciaV]

Yes, you are correct. When your previous tax file is imported/transferred to your current year return, some numbers are consolidated, rounded, or displayed in a different manner due to changes in tax code or programming. As long as your current year numbers match the source document (Form 1099), your entries are correct. The comparison to last year is information for your review only.