How to import my previous accountant's (now passed away) previous years' turbotax files into my laptop so I can bring them into my own turbotax software?

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
December 31, 2018
1 reply
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My accountant, who did my taxes for years using turbotax Home & Business, recently passed away. Her son provided me a memory stick with previous years of turbotax filings contained on it. How can I utilize this information and pull it into the 2018 turbotax Home & Business software that I will install on my own laptop? Do I need to first install both the 2016 turbotax Home & Business and the 2017 turbotax Home & Business programs first, then download my accountant's data into it, and then, finally, install the 2018 version and import from those other two? I'm not familiar with how any of this really works so please forgive my ignorance.

Carl11_2

Employee

At this point, lets deal with the 2017 tax return only. What matters here is the filename extension of the 2017 tax file on the stick. What is the filename extension? It might be .tax2017, but I doubt it since TurboTax is not licensed for commercial use by someone like an accountant. But if anything, the filename extension might tell us what program the accountant did use, so we have a starting point.

If the filename extension is .PDF, then chances are you won't be able import anything. While TurboTax can import from *some* PDF files, it depends on what specific program created that PDF file and what you can import from it is "extremely" limited. Basically, personal identification information only, and that's pretty much it.

M

mistered12Author

Employee

Hi Carl,

Thank you very much for your reply! I said "accountant" but I really should have said "bookkeeper" since that's what she was. And she was just helping me out with mine and did her own using TurboTax. Anyway, I looked at the files on the memory stick and here they are:

Carl11_2

Employee

From what I see, it would appear all those year's tax returns were done using TurboTax. But what I don't see is a tax return for 2017. Perhaps it was not possible to include the entire list? If so, that's okay. What you "need" is the tax file with a filename extension of .tax2017. That would be the 2017 tax file. If you have that one on the stick, then you're good to go. Just copy that .tax2017 file on the stick, to your documents\turbotax directory, and then fire up the program on your computer and elect to "start a new return". Then you will be able to import relevant data from the 2017 tax return, into your 2018 return.