How to assign a transaction to a prior tax year

gwiljr
gwiljr Member ✭✭
It is 04/15/2023 and I just entered a transaction for paying the balance on my federal taxes for 2022. Quicken prompted me if the transaction was for 2022, and I replied "Yes."

I have a health spending account transaction I placed a few days earlier in which I contributed funds to achieve a maximum contribution for the 2022 tax year. Quicken did not ask about the tax year to which it applied (the assumption is it will apply to 2023).

How can I edit the transaction in Quicken so that it will apply to the 2022 tax year versus 2023? I would prefer to not change the transaction date from 04/11/2023 to 12/31/2022.

Comments

  • UKR
    UKR SuperUser ✭✭✭✭✭

    That HSA transaction must not have been associated with one of the Tax categories where Quicken knows how to ask for a tax year.

    Even though the transaction was made in 2023, to make it appear in tax year 2022 record it with a date of 12/31/2022 and add an explanation to the Memo field.
    Like it or not, that's the only method I know.
    Perhaps someone else will chime in with a better idea.

  • gwiljr
    gwiljr Member ✭✭
    The transaction involved transferring funds in the Quicker registries from my spending checking account my spending HSA.

    The HSA is set up as a checking account type with the tax deferred option set to yes. Also, under the account's optional Tax Schedule Information, I had selected the "Transfer In" option to be linked to "Form 1040: IRA contribution, self." My plan was for personal contributions to my HSA would be treated as is a fashion similar to contributions to my IRA. Both allow tax deferred contributions after the tax year provided they are done by a certain date (I think generally April 15) the following year.

    I have never had a situation where I attempted to transfer funds into my IRA, so I decided to execute a test.

    I entered a $1000 transfer transaction in Quicken from my checking account to my IRA (set up as an investing retirement account) with a 04/10/2023 date. In the memo field I entered a note that it was for the 2022 tax year. Upon committing the transaction, I received the same prompt as with my tax payment asking if the contribution was for 2022 or 2023 (see attached screen capture image).

    Obviously, Quicken is able to allow transactions to be posted to a prior tax year, but you have to have the receiving account or the receiving expense category set up correctly.

    The federal tax payment I made was to an expense category I use to track federal tax withholdings. It is linked to a "federal tax withheld" tax line item in Quicken, so it worked.

    I think my HSA set up in Quicken needs to be migrated from a Quicken spending account type to an account set up more like my IRA (my HSA allows investing options like my IRA). This would resolve the issue I posted several months ago about how to make an HSA work more properly with through-the-year personal contributions that should be treated as tax deferred, just like an IRA. I suspect the Quicken Tax Line Item is not working since I set up the HSA as a spending account like my checking, or there may be still either a set up error on my part or a bug in Quicken. I will test this and see what happens as I have received message from other Quicken users with the same issues with their HSAs.

    Thank you for your response to my post. You got me to thinking.
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