Can't enter spouse's income in Tax Planner - using MFS not MFJ

Joan Friedman
Joan Friedman Member ✭✭
edited February 2019 in Budgeting and Planning Tools (Windows)
I am trying to use the Tax Planner to calculate 2019 estimated tax payments.  I receive a W-2 but my spouse receives a 1099-MISC, so nothing is withheld and her income is considered business income.  We are better off using "married filing separately."  I have imported our 2018 TurboTax data into Q2019, but I am having a lot of trouble figuring out the Tax Planner.  I set it to "2019 - married filing separately - projected value" and am able to calculate just my projected taxes, but no matter what I do, I cannot figure out how to adjust any of the figures related to my spouse's income.  They are greyed out no matter what I do.

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  • Ps56k2
    Ps56k2 Quicken Windows Subscription Alumni ✭✭✭✭
    edited February 2019
    Had updated Topic Title to reflect actual question - MFS vs MFJ
  • Joan Friedman
    Joan Friedman Member ✭✭
    Thanks, Markus1957.  It will not allow me to create two separate Projected Values, but I can create as many Scenarios as I want. 
    As a rule 110% works, but not in a year when there are significant changes.
  • rbknox
    rbknox Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭
    I don't believe this is a MFJ vs MFS issue. I don't think the Tax Planner properly handles spouse / business income. In my case, and I just tried this fresh again in 2019, I earn W2's and my wife is considered self employed with 1099-Misc. So essentially the same situation as Joan. I track my wife's business income with the category "Self Employment Income Spouse", which has a tax category of Schedule C:Gross receipts or sales.

    In the Tax Planner under the Business Income page, the income for my wife always shows up in the "Self" column, even though the transactions correctly list the Self Employment Income Spouse. When I click on "Spouse" the transaction list is empty.

    This has been the case for as long as I can remember. Markus, interested if you can identify some other malfunction in the data file for this. Or maybe Quicken needs to fix!
  • markus1957
    markus1957 Quicken Windows Subscription SuperUser, Windows Beta Beta
    @Ralph Knox  you are correct that it this is not entirely a MFJ vs. MFS issue. The tax line items associated with the Spouse column in the Business Income section should be assigned separately like they are in the Wages section. Quicken could fix that and calculate the MFJ tax owed in your scenario. 

    Calculating both parties MFS tax obligation, whether it includes Schedule C income or not, is beyond the capabilities of the planner as it currently exists.
  • rbknox
    rbknox Quicken Windows Subscription Member ✭✭✭
    I would think that if Quicken provides the option to model your taxes as MFS, the model should work for that scenario. As it happens, it doesn't work properly for either situation (mine is MFJ). This is another example of a very useful tool that works badly. Now that Quicken is consolidating to a single version, perhaps this might get some attention. BTW, is there a formal way of making requests for fixes?

    There are other issues with the Tax Planner - for example, it doesn't always allow you to extrapolate based on current year transactions/scheduled transactions. In my case, sometimes the data source I would like to use is greyed out, even though for me it would be the right choice. In addition, not sure if this got fixed, but Tax Planner will mysteriously change values to some default or pre-configured settings after you have painstakingly modified them.

    Bottom line, Tax Planner is a frustrating experience: works just well enough for you to appreciate its potential value, but contains enough limitations and bugs that you never are able to rely on it to actually produce useful results.
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