BUG: Tax Planner entries change when I review setting details

Jim_Harman

I have sometimes noticed that Tax Planner entries are changed unexpectedly. The symptom of this is that the refund due will change significantly when I have not made any changes to the settings. I investigated this and found the following:

In the Details section at the bottom of the entry forms, many of my entries in the Tax Planner are set to "Quicken Data (from 2023)", with the Projected amount set to "Scheduled bills and deposits". In some cases there is also an entry in the Adjustment column. With these settings, the amount in the Annual Total column should be copied to the summary entry at the top of the form.

What I observed is that if I click on Details at the bottom of the form selections at the left and choose the Wages form then click repeatedly on "Next Detail Item" to review the settings, the Refund Due amount at the bottom will suddenly change dramatically.

Exploring further, I found that several of the entries at the top of the forms had changed so that instead of showing YTD amount + Projection + Adjustment as they should, they only show Projection + Adjustment; the YTD amount is not included. Of course this throws the Tax due or Expected Refund off by a large amount.

In my case, the items affected are Taxable Social Security Benefits, Dividend Income, and Estimated Taxes Paid to Date.

I observed similar behavior in a test file, so this is not an issue with my data file.

I see this as a serious bug in the Tax Planner which could lead users to have too much or too little money withheld or paid in estimated taxes. It certainly does not instill confidence in the Tax Planner.

I was able to restore the correct entries by switching the data source for the affected entries to User Entered and then back to Quicken Data.

I am running QWin R52.28

Quicken Kristina

Hello @Jim_Harman,

Thank you for letting us know about this issue and for researching what is happening so thoroughly. Following the directions you provided, I was able to replicate the issue and have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have it further investigated. In the meantime, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) screenshots of the issue and a sanitized copy of your data file in order to contribute to the investigation.

While you will not receive a response through this submission, these reports will help our teams in further investigating the issue. The more problem reports we receive, the better.

We apologize for any inconvenience!

Thank you.    

(CTP-7866)

Jim_Harman

Thank you for your quick response, @Quicken Kristina

I have sent this issue to Report a Problem.

leishirsute

I reverted back to R49.33 which seems to have properly working Tax Planner.

jl747

@Jim_Harman

Not sure if your problem is in addition to the zeroing out of numbers in the Tax Planner.

Just a thought.

Still waiting on a fix. (CTP-6982)

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7936340/tax-center-projected-tax-amounts-are-zero-edited

Jim_Harman

@jl747

This problem is in addition to the Projected tax amounts problem.

jl747

@Jim_Harman

Thanks for confirming.

Q97

When I open Tax Planner, the refund amount will be wrong. In the Wages tab, the amount in "Wages and Salaries - Self" at the top is off by a few thousand dollars. In the details pane below, the values in the Quicken Data (from 2023) are correct (including an "Adjustment" I enter because of another bug in the TP). In particular, the "Wages and Salaries - Self" at the top is not the same as the "Annual Total" shown in the details pane. I then toggle between "Scheduled Bills and Deposits" and "Estimate Based on YTD Daily Average" and back. The Wages amount at the top then shows the same (correct) value as the "Annual Total", and the refund amount is then also correct.

I've had this same issue in the Tax Planner for years, always using the most up-to-date version, currently R52.28. There is a simple workaround so I just live with it. [Removed - Disruptive] here are 3 bugs [Removed - Speculation]:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7936340/tax-center-projected-tax-amounts-are-zero-edited

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7939638/r52-xx-enter-valid-date-after-download-transactions-edit33

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7936935/bills-income-display-always-defaults-to-14-days-x

[Removed - Rant/Speculation]

In fact, even their latest R52.28 release, which according to the release notes only changes the logo, introduced another new bug for me. If I go to Help → About Quicken, the dialog opens, but when I move my mouse to the X in the upper-righthand corner to close it, the rest of the dialog disappears except for the X, which is not clickable, leaving the whole UI locked up by the modal window. Fortunately, hitting Esc on the keyboard dismisses the dialog. It seems unlikely to me that I am the only one affected by this. [Removed - Speculation]

I'm not trying to bash Quicken. Quicken is my favorite app. It has many great features found nowhere else. If they ever manage to [Removed - Speculation], there are great opportunities to deliver truly new features.

Jim_Harman

@Q97 Thanks for confirming that this is a longstanding issue. @Quicken Kristina has been able to replicate the steps that I found that cause the data to be changed; there may be other actions that cause this problem as well. If you can find another sequence of actions that causes the data to change incorrectly, please post it.

Hopefully the developers will be able to find the cause and fix it.

BTW in R52.28, I can click on the X in About Quicken and the dialog disappears as it should.

Jonathan DeKock

I am also experiencing this problem. It impacts multiple fields. I have seen it on both the spouse income and spouse witholdings, but not at the same time. The symptom is the same - the total amount in the "tax planner summary" is missing the year-to-date amount, but does contain the projected amount. If I go into the tax planner and click on the details, making any change to that page fixes it for a little while. Then the bug comes back after I click away onto a different page. It makes the information rather useless, since we're at the start of Q4, sometimes my spouse has only 1/4 the income and other times only 1/4 the witholdings causing the total tax due or refund to swing wildly. I have experienced this bug for a while (at least a few months), and currently am running 52.28 - but it started a few updates ago.

Jim_Harman

This problem is not resolved in R52.33, but I think I have found a workaround. The issue appears to be caused by some sort of initialization issue in the Tax Planner, and occurs when I visit a detail page that I have not used or viewed before. The entries that are affected are ones where I have selected Quicken Data as the source. The workaround is:

1. Open the Tax Planner and note the tax due or Refund amount.
2. Click on Details at the bottom of the list on the left.
3. Go to the first Details page (Wages / Wages and salary - Self)
4. Click repeatedly on Next Detail Item until you get to the bottom of the list, 80 times total.
5. At some point you may see the Tax or Refund due change. This is an indication that you are experiencing this problem.
6. When you have visited all the detail pages, fix the entries that have changed. For me this was Dividend Income, Other income / Taxable Social security, and Tax payments / Estimated taxes. To restore the original entries, all I had to do was change the selection from Quicken Data to User Entered and back.
7. As a check, repeat steps 2-5 and make sure the Tax due or refund amount does not change.

Please let us know if this fixes this problem for you. Hopefully that will help the developers understand what is causing it.

Rocket J Squirrel

@Jim_Harman I followed your steps in R52.33, and sure enough, my bottom line changed partway through. So I think your analysis is spot on.

I didn't have to "fix" anything, though. Simply returning to the summary page restored (what I hope is) the correct bottom line, and this persisted across QWin sessions.

Rocket J Squirrel

On my production R51.12 release, returning to the summary did not restore the correct bottom line. But closing Tax Planner and returning to it did.

William Wilkens

Same problem. Refund Due amount is wrong in Projected Tax.