Poking the bear...

Did I say I was done talking about the tax issue? Well our good friend Bob Meighan, a VP over at TurboTax, keeps leaving me comments that supposedly prove I am in the wrong on this issue.

So, instead of letting this lie, I feel compelled to respond yet again to Bob and the folks at TurboTax. On the advice of Customer Service Rep Anita and VP Bob, I actually went into my current 2006 return and attempted to add a bogus W2 to see what would happen...

First off, Bob is correct on one point. TurboTax doesn't ask you to fill in the SS# by W2. Instead it asks who to associate with each W2 at the beginning of entry. I probably incorrectly chose myself for both W2's. Therefore, it was not incorrectly viewing 2 different SS#s as one person. Score one for Bob...

But after I enter in another bogus W2 on my 2006 return and associate it with me, here is the screen that pops up:

I don't claim to be a tax guy. That's why I pay TurboTax $50 to do it for me. If I knew the intricacies of social security witholding and that you only have to pay up to a certain point and that this applies to each individual filing on a joint return, I WOULD HAVE DONE THE DAMN RETURN MYSELF! But I don't know these things and that is why I relied on TurboTax to ask the right questions in order to fill out the return properly.

So when TurboTax tells me that my company may have withheld too much SS tax, I would believe them. TurboTax only asks that I check to make sure the numbers on the W2 I am entering match what they have on the screen. I DID THAT AND THEY MATCHED! At no point did they question whether I chose the correct person for the W2. So I went forward believing that I indeed paid too much in SS tax and was entitled to a refund. What reason would I have to think otherwise?

BTW, Bob (if you're still listening)...no need to send me software...I'm pretty confident it will only confirm what I am stating above.

Bottom Line (for me...again): TurboTax should flagged this error and instructed me how to fix. The point of the software is to make accurate tax preparation an easy process. I'll admit TurboTax is an easy process but I'd question the accuracy piece.

Bonus: I'm going to label all of these posts as "My TurboTax / IRS Rant" so that these posts do not get lost in time.

Bonus #2: Bob states the following in the comments section:

"Just to reiterate what Anita already stated, if you entered one or more W-2s for the same spouse that exceeded the limits above, TurboTax flags you with a warning and error flag. The warning allows you to change the "ownership" of the W-2 to either spouse."

My response...see the actual screen print above...you are incorrect.