Doncha wish that when you finished the exhautive (exhausting?) TurboTax interview that you could just press that enticing “File Return” button, and all would be complete?

Yeah, me too.

Yet every time I think I’m finished, another issue pops up and nags at me to investigate.

Today’s Quixotic quest was in search of the correct carryover capital losses.

After last year’s market bloodbath, I, and I imagine you, too, have some capital losses (i.e. negative capital gains).  Good news:  they reduce the tax you owe.  Bad news: you can only claim $3000 in losses this year; if you have more, you must carry them over to next year.

The problem is that the carryover amounts are different for myself and my partner on our Federal-filing-single forms than on our Massachusetts-filing-jointly-as-married forms, because some of my losses offset her gains when we file jointly.  When TurboTax imports my form as a starting point for the Pro-Forma Federal married form, it carries in the wrong carryover amounts.

Therefore: I recommend strongly that you record your carryovers on paper (I know that sounds like a Luddite) to make your filing easier next year.  Feel free to use the following format, if you find it useful.

The Federal forms for Pat and Alex individually should be correct.  You can record the values from TurboTax’s Federal Carryover Worksheet.  The values for the Massachusetts state return come from the Commonwealth’s Schedule D, line 22 for long-term loss carryovers and Schedule B, lines 23 or 40 for short-term loss carryovers.  Next year, override the values on the Massachusetts’ Schedules B and D form for 2008 caryovers.

Original post on TurboTax complaints:  Three things I hate about TurboTax

Tags: capital losses carryover, gay taxes, Massachusetts, TurboTax

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