Social Security Benefits - how to feed into Tax Planner --> Other Income

Ps56k2

Was looking at the Tax Planner, and the various fields
and how they are filled from the transactions and categories.

How should Social Security Benefits paid out in a transaction be categorized in a Register ?  
I don't see a built-in Category that reflects the SSA Benefit payout. 

Also, looking at the Tax Planner - Other Income -
I can see the Total Social Security Income field,
which appears to be capable of the summary of any SSA transactions - but how ?

Rocket J Squirrel

Oddly, there is no built-in category for SS benefits. You have to create one (or 2 if you're married) and connect it to the correct tax line item.

Ps56k2

And which one would then trigger the Tax Planner into grabbing those transactions -

and nothing else - for the SSA Total Benefits entries ?

Guess I'll play a little....
https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7854216/tax-planner-compute-taxable-social-security-income

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20053571/#Comment_20053571

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20110563/#Comment_20110563

You need a top-level income category named Social Security. If you are single, you must assign it the tax line item "Form 1040:Social security income, self". If you are married, you should have 2 subcategories, 1 for each spouse, with the appropriate "self" & "spouse" tax line items.

Rocket J Squirrel

ps56k said:

And which one would then trigger the Tax Planner into grabbing those transactions -

and nothing else - for the SSA Total Benefits entries ?

Guess I'll play a little....

No need to "play," or guess, or search. The answer is before your eyes. See the underlined blue link in the top right of the image you posted above? It's not just decor. Click it.

ps56k said:

You need a top-level income category named Social Security. If you are single, you must assign it the tax line item "Form 1040:Social security income, self". If you are married, you should have 2 subcategories, 1 for each spouse, with the appropriate "self" & "spouse" tax line items.

Whoever wrote that answer must be very smart.

Ps56k2

Rocket J Squirrel said:

Oddly, there is no built-in category for SS benefits. You have to create one (or 2 if you're married) and connect it to the correct tax line item.

this was the key - from the "smart person" - creating the missing Category linkup ....

markus1957

To take it a step further; if you expect a portion of SS to be taxable, create another non-taxable category and use a split to record social security income received based on the taxable amount.

Ps56k2

markus1957 said: To take it a step further; if you expect a portion of SS to be taxable...

Just trying to load up the Tax Planner for the worst case of various future incomes -
- added extra to the Cap Gains for end of year mutual fund payouts
- added all of the projected SSA benefits to the Other Income field

kgef3g

I set up two "paychecks" for the monthly Social Security payments my husband and I receive. However, when the deposit is posted to Quicken, they both default to just one of the paycheck templates, so I need to manually adjust the other deposit. How do I keep them separated? Since the deposits are both coming from Social Security Administration, there seems to be no differentiation between his and my payments as there would be if we were working for different companies. Any ideas how to get around that?

markus1957

I use two regular Income Reminders with category splits (to record taxable versus non-taxable amounts) that automatically enter into the register each month.  The downloads always match to the correct entries.

A Paycheck reminder is overly complex for a social security payment.