Better If We Don't Have To

It was a successful Hawaii trip in that a number of financial and personal projects were completed. However, the final item, my parents' 2018 tax returns, was ready to be sent in but couldn't, alas, be crossed off the list.

The problem was not the detail (I reconciled the accounts of their small business), nor tax law changes (they met the test for the Section 199A, aka QBI deduction), but the bane of the accounting profession, missing documents.

The exact amounts of Mom's retirement income and withheld taxes were known, but we couldn't find the Form 1099-R. TurboTax doesn't require this document for electronic filing, but the electronic transmission was rejected by the IRS because of a data mismatch. (TurboTax advised that it was probably one of the birthdates, but correcting the government database wasn't going to happen quickly.)

So we are going to do this old school. The returns have been printed and signed and are sitting on the table. Once they receive a duplicate 1099-R, it will be stapled to the returns and mailed in. And if the duplicate doesn't come in, we'll file Form 4852. But it's better if we don't have to.