Taxable portion of Social Security

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
April 14, 2025
2 replies
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It appears that your Deluxe version of Turbo Tax has a bust in the calculation for the taxable portion of Social Security benefits for Married Filing Jointly. Do you have a way for me to fix my return?

JohnB5677

What is your question regarding the taxability of your social security?

What do you think is wrong?

The calculation can be complicated.

See IRS publication on Social Security Pages 16-19

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NCPERSON1

@zathens that is quite unlikely - there would be millions of hits and complaints if that was the case. What do you think is incorrect?

MA1955

The question about foreign residency for the spouse of people that chose married filing jointly regarding income from Social Security benefits is problematic.
The initial question is fine, as it is clearly asking about the 1st person and a Yes/No response is appropriate.

The next question regarding the spouse is worded in such a way that it has led to a number of people getting IRS letters stating an error was made in calculating the taxable amount of Social Security income.

Instead of asking if the same answer applies for the spouse, and that yes/no response leads to an error that could have been avoided by asking the same specific question as was used for the first person, word or code the programming more clearly. Yes response meant yes it’s the same answer. Not, yes the spouse lived in a foreign country!
How many others were impacted by this?