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401K Scheduled Deductions in Tax Planner

Regina@

My YTD 401K deductions show up correctly in the Tax Planner, but "Projected" or "Scheduled" deductions do not. I almost overpaid my estimated taxes due because I was using the Tax Planner to advise me of how much additional tax I would owe this year. Can we get this fixed?

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Boatnmaniac

Hi @Regina@ . There are several things that could be contributing to this. I think the first thing I would check is to make sure that Scheduled Bills and Deposits is ticked and not No Projected Amount.

Image: https://us.v-cdn.net/6031128/uploads/editor/xj/1dgwgvtdiwrb.png

Let me know if this resolved the issue for you. If not, we can look at a few other things.

Regina@

Hi, thank you for your response. Yes, I do have scheduled bills and deposits selected. It is picking up scheduled salary, health insurance deductions, etc. in the list of projected amounts. The only thing is it not picking up is the scheduled 401k contributions.

Boatnmaniac

(Deleted this post and replaced it with my next one below.)

jfclague

I have a similar problem but it is the reverse. I have the future schedule 401k deductions in the planner but the past 401k contributions don't reduce my income so I put a negative adjustment to my salary (I use my pay remittance and use the year to date 401k contributions).

I have tried to resolve this by deleting and recreating my recurring salary reminder but still doesn't work.

Here is my previous post referring to the issue: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7891178/another-tax-planner-issue-question-with-wages#latest

Boatnmaniac

@Regina@ and @jfclague . Let me back up and start over. Quicken is not set up correctly for managing 401K payroll deductions. What should happen when we set up a Paycheck Reminder with a 401K deduction is that the deduction should go against Salaries in Tax Planner, it should also show up in the Tax Reports as a 401K deduction and it should also be a transfer into the 401K account.

But it doesn’t do all of this. The way I see it, we have 2 options that will get us part way there but each is lacking in one way or the other. So, I’ll lay out those 2 ways and you each can decide for yourselves which one best meets your needs.

DEFAULT SET UP IN PAYCHECK REMINDER:

Select the default 401(k)/403(b)/457 from the Pre-Tax drop-down.
Select the 401k account to transfer the deduction into.
Enter the amount of the 401k deduction.
Complete the rest of the Paycheck Reminder.
Go to the General tab of Account Details for the 401k account. Make sure it is ticked for Tax Deferred. Click on the Tax Schedule button and make sure that Transfers In are associated with Form 1040:IRA contribution, self.

Result:

The 401k deductions will be transferred into the 401k account. This is perhaps the main benefit of this option.
They will show up in the Tax Schedule report as IRA contributions and in Tax Summary report as Transfers…not as 401K contributions.
In Tax Planner they will show up under Allowable IRA Deduction in the Adjustments section…not as a deduction under Wages & Salaries.
The net tax calculation result on Tax Planner will be accurate, even though the 401k deductions aren’t subtractions under Wages & Salaries. However, some people might find this to be unacceptable because of that, especially if they make quarterly tax payments.

OPTIONAL SET UP IN PAYCHECK REMINDER: My guess is that this is the option that most people will prefer.

Select Other Pre-Tax Deduction from the Pre-Tax drop-down.
Name it 401k Deduction (or whatever you want to call it).
Click on the button on the right side of the Category field.
Check the box for Show Hidden Categories.
Click on Investments and select the _401Contrib category.
Enter the amount of the 401k deduction.
Complete the rest of the Paycheck Reminder.

Result:

The 401k deductions will show up as deductions under Wages & Salaries.
They will be captured in Tax Planner and Tax Summary reports correctly as 401k contributions.
The disadvantage of this set up is that the 401k contributions are simply categorized and are not transferred into the 401k account.
You will need to either manually enter deposit transactions into the 401k account or wait for them to download from the brokerage.
If you go with this option you should go to the General tab of Account Details for the 401k account, click on the Tax Schedule button and make sure that Transfers In are NOT associated with any tax form. If you do not do this Tax Planner and Tax Reports might end up double counting the 401k contributions.

Whichever method you are using or wanting to use, if in Tax Planner you are seeing Actuals but not Planned or if you are seeing Planned but not Actuals, it probably means that the categories are not being consistently applied. Check the categories of your completed 401k deduction transactions and your planned ones and make sure they are the same....they are either the transfer to 401K category or they are the _401Contrib category.

markus1957

@jfclague the following thread may be of interest in your case

QWin 2017: misssing _401Contrib Category - Page 2 — Quicken

Regina@

Thanks @Boatnmaniac, I am setup like your option 1 but I do not have any tax lines associate with Transfers In or Out. I have been using Quicken since I had to switch from MS Money. I have always had the 401k contribution deductions showing projected in the tax planner wages from my scheduled bills and deposits. I chatted with Quicken Support today and they told me that I must have a corrupt file and to go back to an older backup. Sure enough I went back about 2 1/2 months and the file was working as it should. So I spent most of today almost entirely getting 2 1/2 months worth of transactions entered into my backup and it appears to be working again. Thank you for your explanation as I was not aware of a lot of those options and details and it was very helpful to have a more in-depth understanding.

Boatnmaniac

Regina@ said:

Thanks @Boatnmaniac, I am setup like your option 1 but I do not have any tax lines associate with Transfers In or Out. I have been using Quicken since I had to switch from MS Money. I have always had the 401k contribution deductions showing projected in the tax planner wages from my scheduled bills and deposits. I chatted with Quicken Support today and they told me that I must have a corrupt file and to go back to an older backup. Sure enough I went back about 2 1/2 months and the file was working as it should. So I spent most of today almost entirely getting 2 1/2 months worth of transactions entered into my backup and it appears to be working again. Thank you for your explanation as I was not aware of a lot of those options and details and it was very helpful to have a more in-depth understanding.

You are welcome, @Regina@ . Of course, a corrupted file can cause the problem, too. Good thing you had that backup file. BTW, I'm one of those MS Money converts, too.

jfclague

markus1957 said:

@jfclague the following thread may be of interest in your case

QWin 2017: misssing _401Contrib Category - Page 2 — Quicken

Unfortunately when I click the link, it gives me an error message:

Permission Problem

You don't have permission to do that.

Regina@

I got the same message

Boatnmaniac

Here is the complete link: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7605716/qwin-2017-misssing-401contrib-category#latest. If clicking on it does not open it for you, try copying it and pasting it into the URL line of your browser.

jfclague

Boatnmaniac said:

Here is the complete link: https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7605716/qwin-2017-misssing-401contrib-category#latest. If clicking on it does not open it for you, try copying it and pasting it into the URL line of your browser.

Weird, still doesn't work (either by clicking or copying link).

markus1957

Unfortunately the post has been archived. I did not notice that. It is too long to reproduce but discusses how a hidden Tax Impact account associated with 401Ks can get corrupted causing the issue you describe.

There are steps in the post to repair the issue but they are complicated. If this is a recent occurrence, the easiest resolution is to find a backup file that does not have the issue and bring that file up to date. I see that this is not a recent event for you so I will ask a moderator to unarchive the post.

Regina@

Thanks I did recover a back up but it was a lot of work to reenter 2 1/2 months worth of transactions. I would be very interested to read the process in this archived email if it can be retrieved. Thanks again!

markus1957

Copied from the archived post where I helped a user rebuild the hidden account-

I did some more testing with a simple test file I maintain to try and help you work around this. Each of the steps below worked in that file. First, restoring from the backup is a sure thing although very tedious.

Workaround- Do this on a Copy of your file in case it goes badly.

1. Your data file has a corrupt link to that hidden Tax Impact account. This account normally gets created the first time you create a 401k account in your data file. I found a way to get Quicken to create a new Tax Impact account but it requires deleting the old Tax Impact account. The problem (one of them) is trying to preserve all the old entries in that account and get them into the new account. These entries are recorded by a hidden operation in the Tax Impact account when the Paycheck entry is Entered into the register.

2. The easiest way to access the Tax Impact account is to use Edit>Find/Replace. Search for Cleared Status contains Uncleared. Look for the Tax Impact account. Clicking on the Date link gets you to the account register. Use Move Transactions (right-click on register entry) to move all existing transactions into a new manual 401k account you create to temporarily hold them.

3. Using the gear icon to access Account Details in the now empty Tax Impact account, delete the account. I tried just Closing it but that does not work.

4. Create another new manual entry 401k account. Creating a new account will create a new Tax Impact account.

5. Create a Paycheck reminder for a test company (or your real paycheck) to deposit a 401k employee contribution into the 401k in Step 4. Enter the Paycheck into your checking account.

6. Use Find/Replace to verify the new Tax Impact hidden account has been created and the entry recorded in the register.

7. Move all of the transactions from the old Tax Impact in the Temp 401k into the new Tax Impact account (reverse Step 2).

8. Cleanup the mess by deleting the temp accounts not needed and figure out how to handle all of your paycheck entries during the non-working period of the account (you might have to re-enter them all to get them to show up in the Tax Impact account, but if your lucky maybe a simple edit/save of the paycheck in your checking account might make that entry to Tax Impact). You could also just manually enter the transactions in the new Tax Impact account as was previously suggested.

Good Luck. If you try it, let me know how it works out.

From a follow up question-
So editing the existing entries appears to be the only way to get the missing interim entries into the Tax Impact account. I found a quirk to that though which will complicate things. Editing an existing entry will only work for a 401k created at the time of or after the first new 401k that creates the working Tax Impact account.

So you will need to figure that out. My suggestion would be to Move all of your current employer 401k transactions into the new 401k you create to restore the Tax Impact account. A quick test showed the move worked but entries did not automatically flow to Tax Impact. But, when I simply went to the checking account and opened the paycheck entry and re-entered it, the Tax Impact account was populated.

Before moving the current employer transactions, I would deactivate it from downloads if you use that and then activate the new account for downloads after it is set up properly.

Final comment not from old posts I authored-
Handling 401Ks from multiple former employers would be even more complicated to fully restore. Not impossible but time consuming in that each account would need to go through the process of move to a new account and edit each paycheck entry associated with the account.

Regina@

Thank you!

markus1957

FYI, the full post has been unarchived.

Adding- @Regina@ your issue seems to be a corrupted scheduled reminder rather than a corrupted hidden tax impact account. The reason being is that your issue is with projected amounts in Tax Planner whereas a corrupted hidden Tax Impact account is associated with not seeing actual contributions reflected as negative values in the Wages section of Tax Planner, as @jfclague has described.

Regina@

Interesting. Thx @markus1957@. I guess if it happens again I’ll try to delete and recreate the reminder. Thank you!