TurboTax useless for daytraders?

BigLoser · Feb 21, 2006

Tried to do my taxes using TurboTax, after importing my equity trades from Penson TurboTax generated an error on the field where they sum up total short-term sales and cost. The field has a maximum value of $9,999,999.99 and I have a little over $10 million for each.

WTF, its not like its very hard to hit $10 million in total dollar volume traded if you are an active trader (I had like only 500 trades over a 2 month period, didnt trade equities the rest of the year)

Tried TurboTax support and they suggested I upgrade to TurboTax for business even though I told them I file as an individual not a business. Later I checked out the description for TurboTax Business and it specifically says its for corporations only and it will not generate a 1040 form.

Looking at the TT support forum it looks like this is a problem that several people have complained about but there is no solution other than not efiling - if you print out the return these fields arent included so you print and mail it in but can't efile it which sucks.

Does anyone know if the other tax prep packages (TaxCut, etc) have this same limitation? Trying to figure out if this is a TurboTax specific issue or some sort of lame IRS eFile problem.

rwk · Feb 21, 2006

TaxCut had such a restriction, but I have heard that it has been fixed. I am surprised to hear that TurboTax still has the bug.

I switched to TaxAct for this very reason several years ago.

BigLoser · Feb 21, 2006

TurboTax forum thread describing the issue:

http://forums.turbotax.com/intuit/board/message?board.id=598378E2&message.id=1372

joeyata1 · Feb 21, 2006

thats why in 1999 i sought ouyt a cpa. i did my own taxes for 15 years and this under $10 million in sales klilled me

ssternlight · Feb 21, 2006

They make another product called the Pro series which has no limits. I've used it for years with reasonable satisfaction.

rwk · Feb 21, 2006

Quote from BigLoser:

TurboTax forum thread describing the issue:

http://forums.turbotax.com/intuit/board/message?board.id=598378E2&message.id=1372

According to this discussion, the IRS has a limitation on field size for e-filing. If that is true, you cannot e-file even if your tax program allows larger fields.

BigLoser · Feb 21, 2006

Quote from rwk:

According to this discussion, the IRS has a limitation on field size for e-filing. If that is true, you cannot e-file even if your tax program allows larger fields.

Yea, its the "if that is true" part that I am trying to validate.

rwk · Feb 21, 2006

Quote from BigLoser:

Yea, its the "if that is true" part that I am trying to validate.

Let us know what you find out. I checked this page on the IRS Web site: http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=139682,00.html
According to Part 2, page 72, the fields on Schedule D (and all schedules, for that matter) are 12-byte numeric. If you include commas and a decimal part, the limit is "9,999,999.99". I don't know if you can transmit the data without commas and the decimal part.

Surdo · Feb 21, 2006

It is IRS protocol to drop the pennies, not round them, omit them.
This may or may not help.

BigLoser · Feb 21, 2006

Quote from rwk:

Let us know what you find out. I checked this page on the IRS Web site: http://www.irs.gov/efile/article/0,,id=139682,00.html
According to Part 2, page 72, the fields on Schedule D (and all schedules, for that matter) are 12-byte numeric. If you include commas and a decimal part, the limit is "9,999,999.99". I don't know if you can transmit the data without commas and the decimal part.

I sure hope that they dont transmit commas. Perhaps thats the problem, TT displays commas to make it more readable but then they misinterpreted the IRS regs to think that the gui field size should only be 12 when it can be larger because the actual value transmitted doesnt have commas. Would be nice if someone over at Intuit wakes up about this before I have to file.

I also just checked out the Pro series of TurboTax (thanks ssternlight), seems to be geared toward users who want to prepare other people's returns, not for an individual who wants to do their own only. But if that software can efile with larger values it then that pretty much proves it isnt an IRS protocol limitation, just a braindead GUI problem in the non-Pro version.