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tax line item (e.g. for medical insurance premium via COBRA)

I am using Quicken 2004 Premier and I am somewhat frustrated with the product when it comes to tax line items.

In particular, quicken seems to have no flexibility in specifying tax line items that it has not thought of.

Here is an example that concerns me. When I left my former employer in late 2003, I continued on in their health insurance program (i.e. COBRA). From my reading of the IRS instructions, I believe that these health insurance premiums (since I am now paying the full amount out of my own money) are tax deductible. Depending on your situation, they can either be claimed on line 31 of your 1040 as a Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction, or they can be claimed on schedule A as a medical expense. Please educate me here if I am wrong here.

When I set up a new category in quicken for this (a subcategory of Insurance:Medical Insurance that I call COBRA), there was a place in the dialog box to enter the tax line item. Unfortunately, none of the choices that the program lists by default (in either standard or extended list) seems to be the choice that I need. I ended up selecting as the tax line item schedule A:Medical travel and lodging. This is clearly inaccurate, but is the closest thing that I could find.

Is there a better way that I should have handled this?

Is there a way in Quicken to add to the tax line item list? (And it has to work with Turbo Tax, since that is what I am using to do my taxes.)

Or for this situation, would it have been better to not give any tax line item at all? From what I gather from this posting

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at least with older versions of TurboTax, it will ask you in your interview when doing your schedule C about your insurance and then put the amount in the proper place (as a Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction or on schedule A as a medical expense).

Reply to
yhbrent
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Have been thru this same frustrating experience recently. Am not a tax expert but I treated the premiums as deductible - Sched A in my case.

Assigned tax line item Sched A:Doctors, dentists and hospitals for mine. Regardless of choice it all winds up on Line 1 of Sched A but is on the wrong line of the Sched A worksheet. A bit confusing if you need to dig back thru previous returns.

Would definitely assign a tax line item - that way you can at least get the correct totals in a Tax Summary report.

I run a my own Medical Expenses report in QW - with subtotals by category and then use this report to edit the Sched A worksheet to get everything on the right lines and keep a clean history.

A lot of extra effort to do what it seems could be done with the proper tax lines in QW - Second your motion for more choices in tax line assignments.

Reply to
JM

Using Quicken for Windows version 4 (1994) the definition of tax lines is an editable file, TAX.SCD. Might check the version you are using for that same file. Possibly you need to upgrade to Windows verions 4!

btw - if you find the file, you have to derive each fields meaning.

dick w

Reply to
Dick Weaver

That file is still present even in Quicken 2004.

The problem with hand editing it is twofold. First, here are the first several lines from that file:

3 SNN 256 SNN Form 1040 258 LNN Sick pay or disability pay 269 LNN Taxable fringe benefits 261 LNN Alimony received 266 LNN Social Security income, self 611 LNN Fed tax w/h, Soc. Sec.,self 483 LNN Social Security inc., spouse

Clearly, the initial number on each line (3, 256, ...) is some sort of code that they use; I have NO idea what value to use.

Second, I have no idea what the SNN versus LNN stuff means and what value to use.

I do not want to corrupt that file and possible crash the program when it tries to parse it, so I have to know that what I am putting in is correct first.

Anybody from Intuit read this newsgroup--would LOVE to hear your response.

Reply to
brentboyer

I have now decided that this is probably wrong to do: it does NOT all end up on sched A if you are self employed. Instead, since it can end up as a straight income deduction on your 1040 if your business was profitable, it is much better to claim it there then on the sched A where you only can claim medical expenses once they exceed 7% or so of your income, right?

Reply to
brentboyer

Would agree with you for your case. In my case I wasn't self-employed - retired early - before medicare eligibility.

Have been looking at the TAX.SCD file and trying to make sense of it - pasted it into Excel. Appears the items are generally numbered sequentially - with no relation to tax sched or form.

The same file is also in the TTax directory - appears to be identical from a cursory examination.

Probably not future here - how does an item number get assigned to a particular entry in a worksheet/schedule/form??

snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote:

Reply to
JM

- Bob

Reply to
Bob Weissman

I agree. I created specific tax-line items in my Category List and gave them 1040-related descritions:

Clinic & Hospital Fees Sched A, Line 4 Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals

Doctors, Dentists Fees Sched A, Line 3 Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals

Eyeglasses & Contacts Sched A, Line 7 Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals

Etc. It is disgraceful that Quicken hasn't perfected the assignment of very specific tax form line item assignments in the program. They tout the inter-operability of Quicken and TurboTax, but there is a lot that remains undone in this area. Doug

Reply to
Doug Ellice

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