Possible bug in handling Medicare Part B premium deductions

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
August 5, 2021
2 replies
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I am using TurboTax Home & Business 2020. When TurboTax has you input information from Form SSA-1099 (for social security payments), it has you enter, among other things, the amount of the Medicare Part B premium deduction. Then TurboTax automatically places this Part B premium amount (which is for a type of health insurance) in the health expenses section of Schedule A for itemized deductions.

However, this apparently does not take into account the situation where one, like me, is self employed and qualifies for having this Part B premium amount appear as a self-employed health insurance deduction under the "Adjustments to Income" portion of Schedule 1, instead of appearing in Schedule A. This can result in a more favorable deduction.

The only way I could figure out to fix this is to override what TurboTax wanted to do by going straight into the Forms section of TurboTax and manually removing the Part B premium amount from the Form SSA-1099 input screen, and by making sure it was included in the Adjustments to Income of Schedule 1 form.

Am I correct in understanding that this is a bug in TurboTax? Is the manual override described above the best way to handle this?

TurboTax Home & Biz Windows

VolvoGirl

Right,but it's not a bug.

Medicare plan B payments are qualified as Self-employed medical insurance premiums and should be entered under Business instead of in the Social Security Benefits entry area. So go back and take it off your SSA-1099 entry.

You don't have to manually enter it or override anything. Just don't enter it from the SSA-1099 and enter it in the interview steps as regular ins under business.

Gary114Author

Thank you. I don't believe that TurboTax warns a user who is inputting SSA-1099 information that one should not input Part B premiums if one is self employed. Perhaps there are TurboTax users who may not know that they should not be inputting this as a SSA-1099 entry and who may end up with a smaller adjustment to income (e.g., deduction).

VolvoGirl

Funny you should post that. I was just making you a screen shot.

DoninGA

There is no need to manually override the form. You can just remove the amount of Medicare premiums paid in the Social Security section of the program, then include those premiums as self-employed health care expense in the Business section of the program.

To enter, edit or delete Social Security benefits reported on form SSA-1099

Click on Federal Taxes (Personal using Home and Business)
Click on Wages and Income (Personal Income using Home and Business)
Click on I'll choose what I work on (if shown)
Scroll down to Retirement Plans and Social Security
On Social Security (SSA-1099, RRB-1099), click the start or update button

Or enter ssa-1099 in the Search box located in the upper right of the program screen. Click on Jump to ssa-1099

kare2k13

@DoninGA I am so glad I researched this further in the postings. I posted the same problem a few days ago with tons of views, but no answers. This is exactly what I needed. Thank you so much.