Question

Error message saying taxes cannot be ore than 20% of wages

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
March 24, 2020
1 reply
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I keep getting an error message stating that my illinois withholding is greater than 20% of the illinois wages. I work in Missouri but live in Illinois. My job paid taxes to both states. On my W-2 there is nothing entered for state wages for Illinois but there is tax amount listed. The software however, will not let me proceed even though I have entered the information as it appears on the W-2. How do I fix this?

AmyC

You need to change the W2 state information section to include the missing IL wages. It is odd to be showing IL tax withheld and not wages.

The state section of the W2 has two purposes.

The issuer is letting the IRS know which states to report federal information from your return. That has already been reported to the IRS.
It is for the program to use to get your state section correct. You need to correct the IL income.

You are right about never changing anything on the federal portion of the W2. That would be awful!!

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S

ShanayaeAuthor

When I put the IL wages as the amount shown for the Missouri wages, it said I could not efile because when all of the wages are added together, they are more than the total reported federal. Should I add the missouri wage amount to IL and mail in the return?

B

BillM223

Is the amount listed for state wages for Missouri equal to 100% of the federal wages? If not, try subtracting the Missouri wages from the federal wages and entering this as the Illinois wages.

If the Missouri wages as entered are equal to the federal wages so you can't do that, then try this:

Write down your Missouri tax due/refund and your Illinois tax due/refund.
Go back into TurboTax and change that W-2 so that the wages reported in each state is one half of the federal amount.
Go through the state interviews again
If that doesn't change your tax due/refund in the two states, then go ahead and e-file.

The reason is that most states don't actually use that state wages amount; instead, they start with the Federal Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) and add and subtract things,and the state wages amount on the W-2 is never referenced.

Let us know what happens.

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