Some tax reports are missing info

PAUser

Some of the Quicken tax reports seem to be missing info. Specifically, I have an account set up where every transfer into it is associated with "Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals". Those transfers do in fact show up in the "Tax Schedule" report but are entirely missing from the "Schedule A-Itemized Deductions" and the "Tax Summary" reports.

What gives?

volvogirl

You don't have to enter each charge.  You can enter the total for the month like 
July 2019 medical expenses and put it to the Medical Exp category like you did with the 8/28 Ultrasound expense. 

NotACPA

No I'm not a CPA .I'm a retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor".   And the few people who have both a CPA and a CISA will tell you that the CISA is every bit as hard to achieve as a CPA.

The primary difference is that I don't need to know "timing and recognition of Income and Expense" and the CPA's don't need to know the computer ... and usually don't.

[And, a transfer is not an expense.]

Jim_Harman

Are the transfers part of split transactions? Some of the tax reports do not handle splits correctly.

Also make sure that the account selections for all the reports are the same. If both sending and receiving accounts are included a report, the transfer will be internal and may not show up in the report. The Transfers selection on the Advanced tab of the report customization controls which transfers are included in the report.

PAUser

Jim, thanks for responding.

The transfers are not part of split transactions.

The account selections for all reports are the same.

The Advanced tab of the customization for the Schedule A-Itemized Deductions does not have any options to select at all, transfers or otherwise.

PAUser

One more response, Jim. The Advanced tab for the Tax Summary report does allow one to select "All Transfers." I selected it but it still fails to pick up the transfers into my "Schedule A" account.

UKR

In Quicken for Windows it's my understanding that you cannot assign both a Transfer-To account and a Category to a single transaction.

If you are using the Tax Schedule selection in your Transfer-To account to categorize Transfers In as Medical Expense ... AFAIK, it may work to a certain extent, but according to Quicken Help, the Tax Schedule feature is supposed to only be used for deductible Retirement account contributions and withdrawals.

If that's what you're doing ... someone from Quicken would have to give us some more information ... is it OK to use Tax Schedule this way? Should it work (and if not, why)?

PAUser

UKR, I don't believe that I am assigning "both a Transfer-To account and a Category to a single transaction." In fact, I don't even know how to attempt to do that.

Where are you getting your info from Quicken Help on the limits of the Tax Schedule report? I've searched Help and cannot find anything similar to what you've stated. In fact, I cannot find anything explaining the difference between the Tax Schedule, the Tax Summary, and the individual Schedule reports.

PAUser

Ahh, I think that I may have found a partial answer. According to the online Quicken Help (as opposed to the help version found by clicking on help within the program) the Tax Schedule report "shows all transactions assigned to tax forms in the Category List or assigned to transfers into and out of accounts. "

The Tax Summary report, on the other hand, shows "all tax-related transactions, subtotaled by category". In other words, the transactions are not categorized by Tax form or tax treatment, but by category. My missing transactions are in the report, but listed under "Transfers" rather than under "Medical:Doctor".

However, all of the inter-account transfers are still missing from the "Schedule A-Itemized Deductions report". On another thread, someone named "Quicken Sarah" recommends "drilling down to the individual transaction level" and then using the Advanced tab to include transfers. I have no idea what that means since the Schedule A report is already at the individual transaction level.

UKR

The information I was looking at pops up when you go into Edit Account Details and click the Tax Schedule button. The view that this brings up has a little (?) question mark button. Click that and you'll see what I was talking about.

I don't understand what makes you say that "I have an account set up where every transfer into it is associated with "Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals"" ... how'd you do that, if you're not using the Tax Schedule assignments in Account Details?
If you pay a doctor bill from your checking account and assign it to the medical account you say you have created, e.g., as transfer from Checking to [Medical Account], then that's it, a transfer, not an expense categorized to Category "Medical Expense".

Please show us what you're doing. Create image snapshots of the transactions you have in your registers and the reports you are looking at and attach them to your reply.

PAUser

"I don't understand what makes you say that "I have an account set up where every transfer into it is associated with "Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals"" ... how'd you do that, if you're not using the Tax Schedule assignments in Account Details?"

I did do exactly that.

I do not pay doctors from my checking account. Rather, where I live in PA, UPMC has a virtual monopoly on all medical services - all doctors, hospitals, labs, etc. work for it. UPMC sends me a monthly statement showing all of my medical expenses.

So I've set up a UPMC account on Quicken. When I receive a statement from UPMC with new charges, I record an increase to the account in the amount of those new charges. I pay off the account via credit card, and show that in Quicken as transfers from my credit card account to the UPMC account. An image of my Quicken UPMC account is attached.

Those transfers do show up in the Tax Schedule and Tax Summary reports, but not the Schedule A report. I cannot attach an image of the Schedule A report since it is too long, unless you have a suggestion how to do so.

PAUser

Is there a way to edit or delete one's own entries?

volvogirl

But where are the individual charges?  You need to enter each charge on the UPMC statement and assign it to the proper expense category.

What are all those Chase Freedom transfers?  You pay with a credit card more than once a month?  

volvogirl

Looks like you are recording it all wrong.  You need to enter each medical charge in the UPMC account and assign it to the Medical Exp CATEGORY
not to the credit card account.

Then when you pay the UPMC bill with the credit card you make an entry in the CC account as a Transfer to the UPMC account.  Not the other way around.  So it should only be one transfer per month.  

Bob_L

IMHO, @volvogirl is correct.  The expense should be recorded in the payable account you have set  up.  Then when you pay it off with the credit card, there will be a transfer to the payable account to reduce the balance.

PAUser

I was trying to avoid having to enter each charge. Again, I get a single statement from UPMC each month with a bunch of charges. I'd just as soon not have to enter every single one of them, especially since I don't pay them individually.

And I don't believe that that I am "recording it all wrong". The way I'm doing it works just fine on one report, but not another. That's what I'm trying to figure out - why doesn't the Sched. A report include transfers into the UPMC account, but the other reports do?

And, again, can you help me with editing my post? In particular, I'd like to delete that screenshot. There may be more info on it than I intended.

Thanks.

PAUser

I think I figured it out by slightly modifying volvogirl's recommendation. Rather than entering each charge, I can enter the UPMC lump sum that they send me, but categorize that lump sum as a medical expense. Then, I edit the account details to make sure that transfers in are not placed in a tax schedule in order to prevent counting those expenses twice.

That works, but still doesn't explain why Sched A doesn't include transfers that are assigned to it.

PAUser

@Jim_Harman @volvogirl or @Bob_L Can any of you help me edit my post above by deleting the attachment? I hate to leave it out there on the internet. Apparently, I don't have enough seniority yet to be allowed to do so on my own, but you "SuperUsers" do.

Thanks in advance.

Edit to Add: Nevermind - all of my posts on this thread have apparently elevated me to "Newbie" which allows me to edit my own posts.

Bob_L

I’m now not clear how you would record that credit card payment.  I think maybe you are trying to do double entry accounting and not clear why that is necessary in the first place.  @Tom Young is a good one to help out on this as he is an accountant.

volvogirl

You don't have to enter each charge.  You can enter the total for the month like 
July 2019 medical expenses and put it to the Medical Exp category like you did with the 8/28 Ultrasound expense. 

PAUser

> @volvogirl said:
> You don't have to enter each charge.  You can enter the total for the month like 
> July 2019 medical expenses and put it to the Medical Exp category like you did with the 8/28 Ultrasound expense. 

Yep - that's what I posted a few posts up. Works great now. But Sched A report should include transfers like the two other tax reports do. Quicken should fix that.

PAUser

Thanks everyone for the effort. Really appreciate it! @volvogirl @Bob_L @UKR & @Jim_Harman

volvogirl

What about Transfers?  Why should they be on Schedule A?  Transfers from what account to where?  Just the actual charges should go to sch A Taxes.

PAUser

@volvogirl As stated in my original post at the top of this thread:

"Specifically, I have an account set up where every transfer into it is associated with "Schedule A:Doctors, dentists, hospitals". Those transfers do in fact show up in the "Tax Schedule" report but are entirely missing from the "Schedule A-Itemized Deductions". . . ."

They should be on Schedule A because Quicken allows me to set up the account so that transfers into it are supposed to be on Schedule A. If only actual charges are permitted, then why does Quicken provide that functionality for transfers into accounts, and why does it work on some reports but not others?

volvogirl

I'm not questioning why Quicken does it that way but why do you have Transfers that you want on Schedule A?  The transfers are not your actual medical expenses.  You need to categorize the monthly or individual charges properly to the Medical Exp Category.  Which means you might need to go back through your entries and fix them all or make some adjusting entries to get them into Medical Exp.

Jim_Harman

And why have a separate account in Quicken for this one payee? It's not like a credit card where you have a bunch of transactions with different Categories and you make one payment per month.

It seems you could record one monthly credit card payment to UPMC with a Category of Medical expenses where the Tax line item for that Category is Sched. A doctors, Dentist, Hospitals and be done with it.

Or do you want to have a record of all the individual doctor visits in Quicken? If that is the case, you could record the individual visits as expenses in the UMPC account with the Medical expenses category and the payment as a transfer from your credit card account to the UMPC account.

PAUser

I know that you're not questioning why Quicken does it that way, but I am. It's an aspect of Quicken that leads not only to conflicting reports, but also potential danger. People could pull a report and not realize that it fails to include transfers, even though Quicken allows you to classify all transfers into an account into a certain tax form.

And why not do it that way if Quicken permits it? I'm on a cash accounting basis, not accrual, so to me it's a tax reportable expense only when I pay it, not when it pops up on my bills from UPMC.

Anyway, @volvogirl , we can go in circles forever on which way you think is best. But the bottom line is that Quicken purports to let me do it the way I started, but doesn't treat it the same on all reports. That's a flaw in Quicken that is dangerous.

PAUser

@Jim_Harman I set it up this way because I have/had an account at UPMC that I wanted to track in Quicken. It was as high as $10,000, and I wanted it to appear in my Quicken reports, etc.

As I just replied to @volvogirl, my medical expenses are not transactions reported for tax purposes until I make payments on the account. The way I had it initially set up in Quicken mimics exactly what happens in real life. That is, I have an account on which I owe money, but it has no tax effect until I make payments on the account. So I set up the account on Quicken and wanted my payments into that account to be reflected on Sched. A.

Quicken claims that I can do that by setting up the account so that transfers into it are reported on Sched. A.

Ironically, the only report that the transfers don't appear on is the Sched A report. They appear on both of the other tax reports.

This appears to be devolving into a discussion as to why I say potayto rather than potahto. The real issue is why these transfers don't appear on the Sched A report, even though they should.

volvogirl

Yes!  Your credit card payment each month to UMPC should go directly to the Medical Exp Category and forget about running it though the UMPC Account.  You are making it too complicated.  You said you don't want to enter every charge.  The UMPC statement has your backup details for your tax return.

Or are you trying to reconcile and balance to the UMPC statement?  Then you need to enter each Dr. visit etc. manually.

PAUser

@volvogirl You seem to be avoiding the question why Quicken allows me to set up the account so that transfers into it are supposed to be assigned to Sched A, but the Sched A report does not include those transfers.

All of the other tax reports that include Sched A do include the transfers.

Why is that? Isn't that a defect in Quicken? Isn't it dangerous for reports, that supposedly contain the same information, to not include the same information without informing the user?

And I get the feeling that you don't understand what I'm trying to do. Your methods will result in inaccurate reports. That is, it will result in medical expenses for which I have been billed, but have not yet paid, showing up on my Sched A report and presumably carried over into Turbotax.

volvogirl

Sorry we were typing at the same time.  If you only categorize the credit card payment to UMPC that will be only what you actually paid. Hope you get it figured out.

Jim_Harman

Another way to record the details of each of your medical expenses without resorting to a separate account would be to enter one transaction for the credit card payment with a split for each of the individual expenses.

You would have to experiment to see if the reports work as you want with this approach.

PAUser

@Jim_Harman I truly appreciate your efforts, but no one is addressing the key underlying issue, which is why Quicken's reports show differing data. For the umpteenth time, why does Quicken's Tax Schedule report include transfers but the Schedule A report does not?

The way I'm doing it works just fine with the Tax Schedule Report, but not with the Schedule A report - which means that the Schedule A report is worse than worthless, it's untrustworthy.