Turbo Tax has announced that it is not going to be able to provide full support for RDPs and same-sex spouses who are required to split their community income and deductions on their federal tax returns.
For more details from Turbo Tax see here.
They are developing an assisted tax preparation service that will be available after April 21. If you are interested in that service, you will need to file a request for an extension. The first extension is granted automatically. But remember, you must pay any tax owed by April 18 (this year’s federal tax day). So, if you think you might have underpaid, include a payment with the request for extension. The extension gives you until October 17.
I plan to file my own tax returns (for me and my spouse) as I always do and will probably use Turbo Tax to help with the computations. While Turbo Tax advises persons with W-2 income to split the amounts 50/50 on Line 7 (and that is what Publication 555 says as well), I plan to list my own W-2 income on Line 7 and my spouse’s on her Line 7. I will make an adjustment on each return on Line 21 after I have calculated what each of us should report after splitting both amounts equally. Since I will need to provide an explanation for this split, I will add a statement to the return and will not e-file. If I learn anything more from doing my own return I’ll report that in a future blog post, but I doubt that I will be doing my taxes until early April.
Stay tuned and good luck to others who are going through this on their own for the first time.
