Change default IRA transfers out tax line item

Rocket J Squirrel

When a user creates a new IRA, Quicken defaults the Transfers Out tax line item to 1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib.

For most people, this is wrong. The majority of IRAs are funded with pre-tax dollars, so a better choice for the tax line item is 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib. and that should be the default.

New users especially won't have any idea that Quicken is defaulting to the wrong tax line item.

mshiggins

" ... so a better choice for the tax line item is 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib. and that should be the default."

If Quicken is going to make any changes in this area, I think they can do much better than using the same default for every IRA account. There likely are a lot of Roth IRA users; it shouldn't be necessary to make extra work (and more possible confusion) for the holders of either (or any) IRA type.

During the IRA account creation process, the user chooses from a list of IRA types to tell Quicken which type of IRA the account is for. 

Why not suggest that Quicken default to using the appropriate tax line item for the specific IRA account type being created?

And if greater flexibility is desired, Quicken could present the appropriate default tax line item during the account creation process, but permit the user to change that tax line item before the new account process completes.

[Quicken currently offers six IRA types during IRA account creation. If other IRA types require other tax line items, those could be easily incorporated into this approach.]
-JP

Rocket J Squirrel

I agree with JP. I confess I was only thinking about traditional IRAs when I wrote the original post.

q_lurker

While this certainly ties to the "Improve handling of IRA distributions" idea that is now "planned", this would seem to be a simpler adjustment that perhaps could be implemented as an intermediary improvement.