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Another unhappy encounter with TurboTax

I finally finished m Federal and state income tax returns for 2012. I even sprung the $20 for Intuit to e-file my California return, I wanted move onto another part of my life.

Unfortunately, life is not that simple. I got through with my estimated Federal tax for 2013. That worked well. When I tried to do the same for California, TurboTax calculated the 2013 estimated tax. It was close to what I expected. When it came to distributing the payments over the year. things came apart. There were two large payments, all unequal, a zero payment, and another large payment. I could not track down how those payments were determined.

OK. I took the total CA tax. added a few dollars and divided by four. I then tried to override the TurboTax amounts. I QuickZoomed to a voucher and tried to enter the amount. I could not get it to print. I tried using a screen snapshot and other things. I ended up entering the amount by hand. The check was sent off. Luckily, I had entered my SS number and tax form description.

After mailing off the check, I came back to my computer. I had been so wound not notice the voucher contained no useful information about the payment!

That is the trouble with TurboTax--the gotchas. The Others, like TaxCut seem worse. I wonder what would happen if a competent company like Google incorporated the IRS form int a truly well working application.

Reply to
Salmon Egg
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California has had an uneven estimate payment schedule in place for 3 or

4 years now, as I recall. Your CA estimated payments are not allocated 25% to each payment, by statute. Your software is just doing what state law mandates, something you would probably not be aware of based on your own time spent researching new tax laws each year. This information is part of what you are paying for when you subscribe to a commercial tax preparation service.

From the CA tax web site:

"To avoid an estimate penalty, you must pay at least 30 percent in the first quarter, 40 percent in the second quarter, 0 percent (zero) in the third quarter, and 30 percent in the fourth quarter."

Reply to
Mark Bole

That is very interesting and certainly would explain what came out of Turbotax.

I have gotten used to double clicking on a numbered line entry to get detail of the calculation. Such double clicking certainly did not seem to get me anywhere. It does not explain why the 540-ES forms did not print out properly. The 540-ES forms did not print out with the other files for my records.

I made a copy of my TurboTax return for fooling around. For some reason, I was able to use override and get a uniform distribution on the 510-ES vouchers with full information on the voucher. While I now have the vouchers I thought I wanted, I have no clue as to why I did not get them the first time. Now, of course, I have to worry about correcting these vouchers.

Somewhere in the California instructions not automatically supplied anymore, I presume there are instructions on the division of the payments over the year. Considering the wonderful interest rates now available on checking accounts, I think it will be easier on me to just send all the estimated tax in and completely forget about them until next year.

Thank you for your insight

Reply to
Salmon Egg

Even though the website says this, the form 5805 allows for smaller percentages such that at the end of the year you wind up paying 90% of that years tax. 27% in Q1, 36% in Q2, 0% in Q3, 27% in Q4. Then on

4/15 you pay the remaining 10% with no penalty.
Reply to
remove ps

In my case, much of my income comes from mutual funds that pay out mostly in December. It seems that the rules for filling out 5805 or its federal equivalent is an onerous task. With interest rates on checking accounts effectively zero, it may just be easier to pay everything up front.

Reply to
Salmon Egg

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