"Cal Lester" <cal-lester[at]comcast.net> wrote in message
news:QaCdnXmnKPSpnc3fRVn-iw[at]comcast.com...
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And to the North: South Dakota and Wyoming.

dumbstruck wrote:

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It seems that state tax filing is where the online versions are trying
to make their money. Nevertheless, TurboTax online asks for lines from
your state tax return (meaning you have to have already filled out your
state return by hand) and then charges you to efile. I figured I could
afford the stamp if I've got to be bothered with filling the stupid
thing out anyway, so I skipped the TurboTax state return.

-Will

Will Trice wrote:

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After my original post I went through and fiddled with the mortage
interest and got it to work correctly. I amy have fat-fingered
something the first (and second) times through...

-Will

Elizabeth Richardson wrote:
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my my my, you neglected poor little :SUNNY FLORIDA...
Cal

"dumbstruck" <dumbstruc[at]gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1112493367.288489.238890[at]z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com...
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You could always move to Alaska, Nevada, Texas or Washington where there is
no state income tax. ;-)

Elizabeth Richardson

It's free there?!? I used a discount version which let me go thru the
whole process up to the efile button, only to tell me that one of my
first inputs had knocked me out of efile eligibility. Seems that if
you were a good citizen and put more than half of an income stream into
withholding you are suspicious, perhaps because IRS is too disorganized
to verify they got the money (and won't make an exception even if the
actual sum is trivial). So back to that silly quarterly est tax
payment process.

And it appears, although I didn't verify, that it passes on too small
numbers to the state tax version for exempt interest dividends. Their
state tax version is very coy about how it comes up with adjustments up
and down from federal income in my state. This year the adjustment was
so painful, I tracked it down mainly to some unfortunate deductions it
took last year that came back with worse side effects this year.

I realize state tax software isn't going to be such a competitive
market to lead to great products, but is anyone happier with some non
turbo state income tax software? Probably most others aren't cursed
with state tax regs that seem more complex and dysfunctional than fed...

Will Trice wrote:
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That should be three bugs. See what taxes do to your brain?

-Will

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.

1. 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!

2. 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.

3. 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