I spent a couple hours on the phone with TurboTax reps yesterday and walked through the entries (at least #3 in previous post, the tax calculation issue). Leading the rep to the Iowa Tax site instructions and pointing them to the calculation instruction on page 12 for status married filing jointly age 65, I believe I had concurrence from the rep that TT was not taking the age stipulation under consideration. After she verified I was using the latest TT update, she still would not confirm a TT program problem, even after being on hold multiple times as she consulted with others. Instead, between suggesting my virus software and windows update status was interfering with the calculation (as an engineer, I find that difficult to accept based on all other program functioning as expected), or needing to upgrade to an accountant assisted status (unacceptable, since I already entered everything per the program instructions, why should I pay extra for someone to do that again?). She suggested I delete my state filing and redo it. No change. I also switched to the online TT version (apparently available free from my brokerage) and went through the entire painful process of completely inputting the fed and state data... No Difference! I'm assuming that since this age consideration is hidden only in the tax instructions and is not specifically state in the tax forms or tax calculation worksheet, TT programmers ignored it.
I sent a question to the Iowa tax folks to verify that I am not misinterpreting the tax instructions and will update when I hear something. Assuming they confirm my assessment, I guess I may have to manually file the state return to save the liability TT says I have unless something in the program changes. Perhaps I'm the only Iowa resident over age 65, but I have to wonder if others are overpaying their true liability. Up until now, I always held TurboTax in extremely high regard. Maybe I'll see an update to the program in the near future that will keep them up at the top.
