R56.9 Tax Planner "Enhanced" for Taxable Social Security
I see that Tax Planner now calculates the taxable portion of your Social Security automatically in R56.9. Heretofore I was adding a manual adjustment for this.
Nice feature added to R56.9
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Strange, I have R56.9 and I'm not seeing that, it is showing the full amount. This was also not mentioned in the release notes.
EDIT: My mistake, I see it now. The full amount goes on the Taxable Social Security Benefits line, but the Total Other Income or Loses has the nontaxable part removed.
Nice!
Well, sort of nice. I see that it is assuming 85% of our Social Security is taxable. Ran the same through a Social Security tax calculator and it says that only 41% is taxable (EDIT: found this was a calculator for last year, for this year it is 38%).
In retrospect this is worse for anyone that doesn't have the income to push the tax to 85% because now instead of a simple adjustment the correct percentage, you have to now compensate for the 85% number.
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Compounding the problem is that the taxable Social Security income fraction is based on Modified Adjusted Gross Income. MAGI includes non-taxable municipal bond interest which is not even tracked in Tax Planner. It was better when the taxable amount was left for the user to calculate based on their own situation.
Adding- this change shows a total lack of knowledge regarding the calculation at issue and could not have been introduced in an environment that required some form of testing prior to being released. If it were tested or discussed, it would have been obvious that tax planner does not have the data required to make an accurate calculation.
Workaround for Those of us that use a scheduled reminder with taxable/non-taxable split categories- Add the non-taxable split amount to the RRA Soc Sec Ben field below SSI so the Total Other Income value sums to the expected amount. You cannot just add an adjustment to the Soc Sec field because the adjustment gets incorporated into the 85% calc. A User Entered amount is also impacted by 85%.
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I use User-Entered for Social Security income for the Tax Planner to have the actual taxable amount.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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Quicken is assuming 85% is taxable. 😐️ Not good. Well in my case that works for 2025 and therefore I thought they were actually doing a proper calculation.
However whoever decided to use a simple 85% rule needs to undo that change. Please properly inform us when it's released.
You Don't Have to Have a Point, To Have A Point
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guessing that Tax Planner is figuring for a worse case situation with “up to 85%” being taxable.
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That will get caught up in 85% calc too.
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It hasn't for me. It's been pretty exact in R55.26. Is it broken for user-entered as well in R56.9? If so, that kind of destroys the concept of User Entered.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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Yes, it is messed up for anyone that doesn't fall into the category of 85% taxed.
To do a "User Entered" you now have to figure out what that would be from an external tax calculator and then ratio it correctly to compensate for the total amount already being set to 85%.
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@Chris_QPW That's messed up. I guess I won't be updating to R56 anytime soon.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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This totally undocumented change is VERY CONFUSING!
With this change, the numbers in the Other income section of the Tax Planner do not add up because it is using 85% of the amount on the "Taxable Social Security benefits line.
At an absolute minimum they should change the caption in the Tax Planner to say "Total Social Security benefits" not "Taxable" and explain somewhere that they assume 85% of the total is taxable. Much better would be to provide a place where you can enter your taxable percentage.
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I like The idea of entering a percentage. Given the complexity of this stuff I doubt they would ever get the rules correct. Therefore allowing the user to just enter the percentage would be the best way to implement it.
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Please do not alter the values of User-Entered.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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Please do not alter the values of User-Entered.
@leishirsute If they implement the % taxed entry as described above and you don't want the user entered values to be altered, you could set it to 100%.
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@Jim_Harman That would work. Although the concept of User_Entered sort of diminishes.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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Let's face it, the reason for "User Entered" is for correcting the data, if there is another way for the data to be correct then there really isn't a need for "User Entered". Of course, they should leave it because of all the different kinds of possibilities that can come up, but I don't think they should worry about it in this case.
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The reason I use User-Entered is to put the numbers in that I want to use regardless what quicken offers. Sometimes, Quicken data is not used to collect amounts used in the tax planner. I may want to just put in the numbers I want, not what Quicken wants. It's not about correcting Quicken data for me. Prior to using the Tax Planner, I was using a spreadsheet. Then I saw I could put in the numbers with User-Entered in the Tax Planner and that saved time. As you stated earlier, I can use an amount that compensates for the Planner's calculation. Sort of working around a deficiency.
User-Entered makes the Tax Planner generically usable even without having to import Quicken data.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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I'm sorry, I was thinking of the wrong thing. I was thinking of the "Adjustment" entry. Clearly "User Entered" should override anything that Quicken does.
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I enter my calculated taxable amount on the "Taxable Social Security Benefits" line of the tax planner as User Entered. I am not seeing any reductions elsewhere. That is, the Other Income Gains and Losses is 0. Am I looking in the wrong place? On R56.9
EDIT: Ok now I see it. It is just buried in the total and not where I expected it to be. Agree with other comments that this is really screwed up!
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Home
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I just spent a good amount of time trying to figure out why the numbers under Other Income no longer added up. I have always used YTD transactions plus scheduled transactions and then made an adjustment so that the total came close to what my advisor and I expected the taxable portion to be. My taxable portion is around 55%. All I've done is change the adjustment so that total of Other Income is close to what it should be. What a mess this is!
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My taxable portion is around 55%. All I've done is change the adjustment so that total of Other Income is close to what it should be. What a mess this is!
I totally agree. This is a case where adding an entry for the taxable percentage would fix the problem, all you would have to do is eliminate the adjustment. Setting the default for this percentage to 85% would be most conservative and would be the right value for many users.
QWin Premier subscription0 -
I haven't installed this version but wanted confirmation that the "User Entered" field overrides any calculation.
I use User Entered for Social Security Income to input my Taxable Social Security income and don't need Quicken to perform additional calculation on it.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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No, they have not made any additional changes.
In an unannounced change in R56.9, the number shown next to "Taxable Social Security benefits" in the Other Income or Losses section of the Tax Planner, whether user entered or computed with or without an adjustment, is multiplied by 85% before being added to the other items in the section to compute the section total. Previously, the "Taxable Social Security benefits" amount was considered 100% taxable, causing the Tax Planner to overestimate the tax due if you entered or had Quicken compute your full SS benefit on that line.
In R56.9, if 85% of your Social Security benefit is taxable, as it is for most higher income people, the number on that line should now be your full benefit amount. That might be considered an improvement for that specific case. People whose benefit is taxed at less than 85% and/or who want to enter the taxable amount must now do some computations to determine what to enter.
For example, if you know the taxable amount, you can no longer enter it directly as in previous versions, you must multiply the taxable amount by 1/0.85 or 1.17647 and enter that number. The caption "Taxable Social Security benefits" is now incorrect.
A good way for Quicken to fix this issue would be to remove “Taxable” from the caption and provide a place to enter the percentage that is taxable. The range should be 0 to 100% and the default should be 85%. The Help should be updated accordingly.
I edited the title to put quotes around "enhanced" because it is questionable whether this is an enhancement as currently implemented.QWin Premier subscription1 -
Wow, that so defeats the purpose of "User Entered". It makes me wonder if the programmers actually use Quicken for personal use. Is there any Vote on this to change it back to actual Social Social Security income or, at least, treat User Entered as actual User Entered for Social Security Income? Hopefully, Quicken support has gotten word that this change is unacceptable to many users.
Deluxe R59.18, Windows 11 Pro
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Just want to be sure a moderator is aware of this as it is really screwing things up. For example, folks like me that already have SSI deposits set up to create the right tax amount(i.e., before this silent change was enacted) are reluctant to now do anything until we learn how/if this is going to be fixed. @Quicken Anja @Quicken Kathryn
Quicken Business & Personal Subscription, Windows 11 Home
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Wow! I don't know how I missed out on this thread for so long. So, here's another reason why I will not be updating from R55.26 (I previously needed to down-rev from R56.9 for other truly catastrophic issues I was encountering with it). Time to sit tight with R55.26 for as long as it takes for Quicken to fix this taxable SS issue. I'm in the middle of planning out my tax liability and income strategy for the balance of the year so this issue with R56.9 is an up-rev deal-breaker for me.
Quicken Classic Premier (US) Subscription: R59.10 on Windows 11
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Hello All,
Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to report this issue, though we apologize that you are experiencing this.
We have forwarded this issue to the proper channels to have this further investigated. In the meantime, if you haven't already done so, please navigate to Help > Report a problem and submit a problem report with log files attached and (if you are willing) 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.
Quicken Kristina
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Report a Problem sent.
Note there is an Idea post related to this topic here
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just curious - what is the trigger for taxing at the max 85% ?
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And do we now have to VOTE on removing unintended consequences and unannounced changes to Releases ?0 -
Hello @Ps56k2,
That Idea Post dates back to 2019. Due to this current discussion thread, we have re-evaluated and will report the issue as a bug.
Thank you!
Quicken Kristina
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Before making any changes to the way you handle SS income, I would wait for the next version to be released.
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