How do I properly report/track in planning tax center money moved into a 401K/IRA account?

Question

My wife owns a LLC and receives money via a 1099.  We have opened a 401K account for her to move money into for income deduction purposes.  Same as a typical 401K (like I track for myself).  My problem is when using the Planning/Tax Center/ Taxable Income YTD, the income we move into this 401K account does NOT register at all.  I would like it to reduce money in spouse:salary, and report in spouse:401K contribution.  I do not have her income set up as a "Paycheck" as nothing is withheld, it is just straight cash received when transferred into the 401K account.  Any ideas?

Chris_QPW · Answer

The paycheck reminder does somethings in the background that you can't see.

If you want to the transfer to the 401K account to show up as a reduction on your wife's income/salary, then what you should do is change the tax schedule line for transfers into it.

jdschachte · Answer

I am still thinking on these 2 options.  I think the 1st option was really more of a clarification for me, "I need to use the provided "401Kcontrib" categories.  So accepting that I will lose tracking details anyway, maybe it makes more sense for me to move my wife's business account out of my personal quicken file all together.  Then I can set up the paycheck with proper categories to track 401K contribution and company match appropriately.  All I really lose is visibility of transaction in the business account, from my personal quicken file.  Thinking about this, I shouldn't have that account in my personal file anyway…  Thank you @Scooterlam

Scooterlam · Answer

I don't have a solution here, but It seems like one of those "use cases" in which the register needs to handle both a transfer (to a 401k) and a category (tax line item _401Contrib et al).  Explanation below:

In my case, I was never able to show the 401k contribution in both the YTD Income (as a reduction to gross revenue) and in the Tax Planner (as an adjustment to income).  One would expect that Quicken should be able to show in both views with a single transaction.

At the end of the day, I prioritized showing the contribution in the Tax Planner, under adjustments to income - see case 2.   In the tax planner, I can see what can be seen in the YTD Income window.

Here are the two cases:

1.  For 401k contribution to show in YTD Income window, you must use "_401contrib" or some variant, shown in the two images below.  Of course,  this tax line does not transfer the contribution from your business checking to your 401k account.  You can assign this category if you do a simple deposit.  But of course you loose the money trail from the business checking (or other) register.

2.  For the contribution to show in the Tax Planner, (what I do)   setup the 401k register, in account details>tax schedule button as shown in the below images.  Doing this allows the transferred contribution in or out from the 401k investment account to show in the tax planner.  You can set this up for any of your accounts, yourself or spouse.

Its odd that a simple contribution transaction from a business checking to a 401k for either person,  for either elective or employer non-elective seems mutually exclusive…  So….still a mystery to me!  Perhaps this will help you further, @jdschachte