Many missing tax categories, 1040 schedule 1, 2, 3?

bbethke

Even though I purchased Quicken 2020 it appears the software is very old. There are still no tax reporting categories for any of the 1040 schedules 1, 2 or 3. In particular I want the tax schedule report to enable entries for Schedule 3, item 1, Foreign Tax Paid. I have created my own category for this since Quicken never did so, but I cannot assign it to Schedule 1. When will Quicken get up to date and allow us to assign tax categories for schedules 1, 2 and 3? This has been around for a few years now. Is Quicken really this far behind in their program?

Boatnmaniac

You might want to post your idea as a suggested improvement at https://community.quicken.com/categories/community-improvement-suggestions.  It's more likely to be observed there by Quicken personnel and get more attention than here.  Also, other Quicken users are then able to cast their vote there in support of the suggestion and the more users who vote for it the greater the likelihood that it will get into Quicken's planned improvements schedule.

Chris_QPW

@Boatnmaniac The link you gave is for community improvements, I would think that wouldn't be the right place for a suggestion of updating Quicken tax categories.

I would think it would be better to use New Idea on the Home page and select the correct category.

bbethke

I can try to "ask a question" and give a "new idea". But why would the customers have to tell Quicken to make their software up to date to current tax forms? Schedule 1, 2 and 3 have been around for awhile now yet Quicken has still not incorporated any of them. I have used Quicken for decades now and unfortunate that I am stuck with them as the program gets worse and worse. It would be too it would be so difficult to import my QDF into another program so I am stuck!

volvogirl

Schedules 1,2 & 3 are new this year.  Last year it was schedules 1-6.  And before then there were not schedules 1-6 at all.  Tax forms and lines are changing every year now.  The tax programs can't even keep up with the IRS changes.  Or rather it's taking a while for the IRS to finalize the forms each year.

Boatnmaniac

Chris_QPW said:

@Boatnmaniac The link you gave is for community improvements, I would think that wouldn't be the right place for a suggestion of updating Quicken tax categories.

I would think it would be better to use New Idea on the Home page and select the correct category.

Oops!  My bad!  You are right.  I copied and pasted too quickly without looking closely enough first.  I'm blaming it on my getting a sugar low because I'm getting hungry.  That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!  :-)

bbethke

If Quicken does not want to keep up with tax schedules they could at least allow users to enter new tax reporting categories for those missing. I saw a suggestion to assign a new category of "Foreign Tax Paid" and assign it to "Schedule A - other taxes". Of course this is totally wrong but Quicken allows no option. Why can't a user add new tax reporting line items just as we are allowed to add new categories. It would be the only option if Quicken does not want to keep up with tax schedules (which agree are changing a lot).

bbethke

I did submit a "New Idea" of Quicken either adding new tax schedule items as they come up or letting users add new tax reporting line items as we are allowed to add new categories. Perhaps Quicken will listen and add this simple, yet obvious feature.

Chris_QPW

The maintaining of anything to do with taxes is a multi-faceted problem.

You have the tax lines in the categories.

You have the reports.

You have tax planner.

You have exporting to TurboTax.

You have both US and Canadian tax laws.

You have the fact that the Congress/IRS take forever to finalize the tax laws/forms.

bbethke

Agree with all those things, but in this case, "Foreign Tax Paid" has been totally omitted by Quicken and will be in error on almost all user's tax forms since most mutual funds have this. Allowing users to add tax line items for those missing would be an easy solution for those that Quicken cannot keep up with.

Boatnmaniac

bbethke said:

I can try to "ask a question" and give a "new idea". But why would the customers have to tell Quicken to make their software up to date to current tax forms? Schedule 1, 2 and 3 have been around for awhile now yet Quicken has still not incorporated any of them. I have used Quicken for decades now and unfortunate that I am stuck with them as the program gets worse and worse. It would be too it would be so difficult to import my QDF into another program so I am stuck!

It seems to me that Quicken payed more attention to the taxes functionality when Quicken was owned by Intuit than they do now.  But even in the past Quicken was primarily a personal finance tool with some good tax capability features.  It was never (at least for as long as I've been using it) a tax tool for all tax situations.

That being said, like with anything else we feel is lacking in Quicken, if we don't communicate it to Quicken it might not get done or might take longer to get done.  Expressing frustration here might be good for getting some empathetic responses from other Quicken users but users can't do anything to resolve your concern.  You need to make sure the Quicken Team sees your concern.  Heck, they might even tell you that your request is already planned.

bbethke

Understood (and agree). When I reported it as "Ask a Question" "New Idea", was that the best way to do it?

Boatnmaniac

bbethke said:

Understood (and agree). When I reported it as "Ask a Question" "New Idea", was that the best way to do it?

Yes.  I'm glad you did it that way rather than the way I originally suggested.

Rocket J Squirrel

Boatnmaniac said:

It seems to me that Quicken payed more attention to the taxes functionality when Quicken was owned by Intuit than they do now.

Not really. We have been asking for a more complete tax line item list for more years than I can remember. I gave up asking years ago. It's too bad the list wasn't updated while Quicken & TurboTax were owned by the same company. Likelihood has dropped from infinitesimal to zero.

Boatnmaniac

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Boatnmaniac said:

It seems to me that Quicken payed more attention to the taxes functionality when Quicken was owned by Intuit than they do now.

Not really. We have been asking for a more complete tax line item list for more years than I can remember. I gave up asking years ago. It's too bad the list wasn't updated while Quicken & TurboTax were owned by the same company. Likelihood has dropped from infinitesimal to zero.

I do agree that Quicken has never been very responsive to requests for tax functionality improvements, even when it was owned by Intuit.  Perhaps that was intentional because if they made it too comprehensive it might have depressed sales of TurboTax.  But I do recall a couple of times when there were little improvements made before the Quicken spin-off that were helpful to me.  Since then, not so much.  And, who knows, maybe the contractual agreements between Quicken and TurboTax today also restrict how much Quicken can do to improve upon its tax reporting capabilities.

Regardless, I would never suggest to anyone to blindly rely upon tax data in Quicken when completing tax returns since I've seen too many instances of where the Quicken data is different from what is shown on the tax forms from the brokerages and even small differences can flag an IRS audit.  At best, Quicken's tax data should be viewed as a reasonably good but rather general tax planning tool and nothing more.

bbethke

No one should ever blindly accept tax data from a program like Quicken, but I use it to verify my 1099s. If they don't match I try to find out why. Most often it is something in Quicken (like needing to add a dividend received and a Miscellaneous Expense to my Foreign Tax Paid category. But I have found some 1099s in error on occasion and had them reissued with the correction. If Quicken would just let us add a new tax reporting line item (like they let us do for a new category), we could each tailor the tax schedule report items per our situation. But every since Quicken was sold by Intuit it has gone down greatly (in my opinion).