Tax Planner Blues
James Courtney
Member ✭✭
The Quicken for Windows Tax Planner substantially overestimates the income tax that I will owe to the IRS.
The Tax Planner still uses 10% of AGI as the exclusion from itemized deductions for Medical and Dental expenses. The actual 2020 Schedule A uses 7.5% of AGI for the exclusion.
The Tax Planner does not account for the portion of Social Security income that is subtracted from the taxable amount.
I can live with Tax Planner not accounting for the lower tax rate on qualified dividends since the classification of dividends is usually not known until forms 1099 are received during the tax filing season in the new year.
The Tax Planner itself is buggy, particularly with projected values using scheduled transactions. Very often I will select scheduled transactions for a projected value only to see in the Tax Planner summary an incorrect final value for that particular item. Usually I have to turn off the projected value and input a known or best guess for the yearly total for that item.
BTW, why does Quicken for Mac not have a Tax Planner?
The Tax Planner still uses 10% of AGI as the exclusion from itemized deductions for Medical and Dental expenses. The actual 2020 Schedule A uses 7.5% of AGI for the exclusion.
The Tax Planner does not account for the portion of Social Security income that is subtracted from the taxable amount.
I can live with Tax Planner not accounting for the lower tax rate on qualified dividends since the classification of dividends is usually not known until forms 1099 are received during the tax filing season in the new year.
The Tax Planner itself is buggy, particularly with projected values using scheduled transactions. Very often I will select scheduled transactions for a projected value only to see in the Tax Planner summary an incorrect final value for that particular item. Usually I have to turn off the projected value and input a known or best guess for the yearly total for that item.
BTW, why does Quicken for Mac not have a Tax Planner?
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Hello @James Courtney
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your issue, although I apologize that you have not received a response.
If you have not done so already, I would recommend that you open Quicken and navigate to Help > Report a Problem.
This report will not receive a direct response but will be used for investigative and research purposes.
Thank you,
-Quicken Tyka
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The medical deduction was slated to rise to 10% for 2020 but keeps getting temporarily adjusted because of COVID relief bills. Hard to blame Quicken for a moving target. I think Congress moved it out again for 2021 so maybe Quicken should take a look at changing it.
The taxable portion for social security requires data outside of what is currently available in Quicken, but it can easily be accommodated by the individual user based on their SSI MAGI using split transactions to estimate the potion of social security that is taxable. I do that now.
Tax Planner has an input for estimated QDI which is helpful for honing in on tax liability.
I have 70+ scheduled reminders entered to help with tax planning and cash flow projections. Periodically a reminder will get corrupted and need to be fixed but that is rare. A corrupted reminder from the syncing process is the most common cause of what you describe.
Tax Planner provided a pretty accurate estimate of my 2020 liability. It takes a little effort but not enough to complain about.
As suggested, if you file a problem report with a specific problem, it might get looked at.
Adding- Release 36.57 returns the medical deduction to 7.5% of AGI in Tax Planner.1
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