Tax Schedule report omits any split transaction if first split line has no tax line item assigned
I've discovered an issue with the buit-in Tax Schedule report. I have been using this report for years, and generally it seemed to be able to handle split transactions just fine. But today, I see that if I have a split transaction, where the first item of the split does not have a tax line item assigned to it, this seems to cause the entire transaction to be omitted from the Tax Schedule report.
Here, I created a sample transaction, with the first split item having no tax line item assignment (I just left that line item blank for simplicity):
This is what the Tax Schedule report looks like as a result — this transaction does not show up, despite the fact that it includes two tax-related line items:
Yet if I put the transaction back so that its first line has a tax line item assigned:
Then, it appears on the Tax Schedule Report:
I believe this issue appeared only in the past few months, as I am quite sure the exact real transaction I am working with did appear on the Tax Schedule report until recently.
I am using Quicken for Windows R59.6, Build 27.1.59.6
Comments
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As a workaround, I suppose I can reorder split items. But that involves extra steps to do, and even more than that, requires finding all transactions which might be in this situation and editing those. Plus, to me it's a much more serious issue because most people probably are unaware of this behavior and therefore would have no idea that they are missing entries on their reports — and many people would be relying on this report to help prepare their tax returns
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I've never seen or created a Split Transaction with a totally blank line (nothing in any field), so I must admit, I'm a little puzzled why one would do that.
Line #1 or any other line preceded and followed by one or more actual entries would be an example.
Line #5 in the image below, representing an Uncategorized non-zero amount, would be an exception.
Perhaps it might be a good idea if the program were changed to prevent the presence of totally blank lines if they are followed by non-blank, non-zero lines. Do not allow the dialog to be saved until any totally blank lines are removed or filled in with data.
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You've proposed such a bizarre scenario that I can't imagine Q ever "correcting" for it.
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP-1 -
Additional notes:
This could also affect things like mortgage loan accounts — since Quicken automatically formulates the loan payment transactions, then if the first split is principal and second is interest, that means none of those interest amounts would be included on the Tax Schedule report.
Also, in case it is relevant: for the bug I reproduced and wrote up above, in this case I was not overriding any of the tax line items for the respective categories showing in the split.
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The alternative is for Quicken to communicate to users that if they have tax-affected lines, then they need to put them on the first line. Or that users have to be okay with reports that are missing transactions. I think either of those scenarios is worse than just fixing it.
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That's a significantly different issue than your "first line blank". Which is simply bizarre.
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP-1 -
Thank you, @rismanma, for finding an explanation for this. I've been perplexed for the past month or so why the Tax Schedule report stopped working. My solution was to use the Tax Summary report, and on the Display tab, setting it to subtotal by Tax Schedule. I just changed the split lines on my mortgage payment so the interest line was first and the principal payment was below that, and can confirm that it works.
@NotACPA, in the original post @rismanma said they created the sample transaction for simplicity and illustrative purposes, not that they record transactions like that regularly.
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@Randy H. It's still such a bizarre scenario (1st line blank), that there's no reason for anyone to create, that I doubt Q will pay any attention to it.
Q user since February, 1990. DOS Version 4
Now running Quicken Windows Subscription, Business & Personal
Retired "Certified Information Systems Auditor" & Bank Audit VP-1 -
Right, but in fairness, I don't think that it's all that important.
More important is that the bug be fixed. It's a pretty egregious one. And not everyone should be expected to use blank lines in splits — really probably no one does that in their actual work anyway
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@NotACPA I totally agree about the blank line scenario not being something for Q to address. However, when I have a split like this:
- [Mortgage] $1,300.00
- Home:Mortgage Interest $1,400
- [Escrow] $800
and the Mortgage Interest doesn't appear on the Tax Schedule report because it's not the first line in the split, that's a problem that needs fixing. Agree with @rismanma that this is egregious, and it wasn't broken in ~August.
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Home:Mortgage Interest $1,400
What's the definition of this category? Does it have a valid tax line item assigned to it and is it marked as a Tax related category?
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With that interest category having a valid tax line assigned to it, what he is saying is this doesn't work -
- [Mortgage] $1,300.00
- Home:Mortgage Interest $1,400
- [Escrow] $800
This does work -
- Home:Mortgage Interest $1,400
- [Mortgage] $1,300.00
- [Escrow] $800
This requirement for the ordering is new, was not the case, and should not be the case.
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The original issue posted by @rismanma is a very real problem, regardless of the example Split having a blank first line. The point is, if the Split is entered such that the FIRST line is NOT a tax-schedule-related category (one assigned to a tax return Schedule item), then the rest of the line items in the Split are omitted from the Tax Schedule Report even if they are tax-related allocations. This is a CRITICAL problem as it affects data typically provided to a tax return preparer.
In my Split below, the first line item for $29.28 is related to a Tax schedule and will appear in the Tax Schedule report grouped under the proper tax schedule title. The category in Line 2 is not a tax-related category. So, if I switch the order of line 1 and line 2 in that Split (put the $25 allocation in line #1), then the $29.28 disappears from the Tax Schedule report altogether (for the tax year in which it should appear). AND, all other tax-related line items that follow in the Split are also omitted from the report.)
I believe this is a NEW BUG in 2024 — I never encountered it before last month.
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