Tax Planner - why isn't deduction for exemptions included

Question

For a number of years, my tax planner has been off by a lot because the deduction for exemptions is $0. I can enter 3 dependents and the planner is correctly displaying 5 total. However the exemption deduction is $0 and I have not found a way to adjust it. I'm finding it difficult to justify the cost of Quicken if it cannot get closer to a good tax estimate. Any help is appreciated.

Boatnmaniac · Answer

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20495982#Comment_20495982

Since Quicken is not a tax software it does not include line item tax forms for many different things  My guess is that Quicken accounts for only 70%-80% of the more common ones so that it is applicable to the majority of users.  (Quite frankly, I think the Child Tax Credit is a pretty common credit and should be accounted for.)

Anyway, even though Tax Planner cannot pull transaction data for some tax-related transactions into Tax Planner, Tax Planner does allow for user-entry of data.  Here is a link to a thread where a couple of users say how they get the Child Tax Credit accounted for in their Tax Planners:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7954565/child-tax-credit

Jim_Harman · Answer

Where does the child tax credit show up in the tax planner? I have to manually enter it?

@RG8 You can enter the Child Tax Credit in the Other Taxes, Credits section of the Tax Planner, on the Credits line.

Boatnmaniac · Answer

Getting Tax Planner into the ballpark of being "accurate" can be a challenge if the categories used for income and deductible expenses are incorrect (i.e., do not have the appropriate tax line items associated with them).

One of the more common mistakes made by people taking IRA/401K withdrawals is to enter the distribution transactions in their IRA/401K account instead of in the account that those distributions are paid into.  This is not so much of an issue if there is no income tax withheld but if there is income tax withheld by the investment company then it will not be included in the deferred taxable income that is captured by Tax Planner and the Tax Reports. And the withheld tax will not capture, as well.  There is a Product Idea posted about this issue and what process should be used (until Quicken implements the planned improvements) to ensure that Tax Planner and Tax Schedule properly captures the distributions and withheld income tax:  Improve handling of IRA distributions, including QCDs and Roth conversions.