Hey folks,
I just completed my taxes on the Standard version of TurboTax online (which is free if you navigate to it from the IRS website). I ran into four bugs that I thought would be of interest to potential users.
- I used TT's online interview to determine if my state tax refund from last year would be partially or fully taxable. When I completed the interview, TT told me that it was not taxable at all. I knew this to be incorrect, so I repeated the interview figuring that I must have entered some piece of data incorrectly. But as I progressed through the interview, I did not have to change any data (it retained the data from the first interview). Yet after the second interview, TT told me that my state tax refund was fully taxable (the correct answer). Yikes!
- I have a home office and thus deduct part of my mortgage interest on Schedule C. When TT was going through my itemized deductions, it did not reduce my mortgage interest deduction on Schedule A by the amount already deducted on Schedule C (the TT interview takes you through Schedule C first). I was able to manually correct this. Interestingly, it did reduce other Schedule A deductions (e.g. property tax) by the amount already deducted on Schedule C.
- There is no way that I can see to include amortized refinance costs for a rental property on Form 4562 if you file electronically. You can choose to print all your forms and mail them in, in which case you can write in the amortization information on the form.
I reported all of these bugs to Intuit. Interestingly, Intuit offers an Audit Defense service toward the end of the interview. No wonder...
Good luck with your taxes,
-Will