How is the American Rescue Plan / stimulus payment handled in the 2021 tax return?
We did not pay any income tax in 2021 (we’re both retired old geezers) but when I enter everything into TurboTax, it’s telling me we’re getting a $2800 refund.
Since we received a $2800 stimulus payment in March of 2021 I assume that is what’s causing this and apparently have not entered something correctly.
I’ve googled the question but have not come up with anything helpful.
Any thoughts on this?
In TaxAct there was an early question as: Did you receive the payment? However, it was not worded as obviously as it should have been and I had several moments of confusion (beyond my normal level of confusion) before finally answering in the affirmative. So you might have just passed on the murky question without thought.
JimA
Well, I’m using TurboTax not TaxAct.
When googling around on this, I saw some stuff about answering a question for this (in both products) but when I tried following the instructions (in TT) it did not actually lead me to any place to enter any information.
That’s why I’m asking here about it.
These were the TT instructions for 2020 tax year. Hopefully, they haven’t changed it. Playing hide and seek with interview questions is not user friendly. We have been using H&R Block at Home. I can’t verify the information.
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/where-is-…
If you haven’t filed then please follow these steps to edit your stimulus payments:
Log into TurboTax.
After entering all your information click “Federal Review” at the top of your screen.
On the screen “Let’s make sure you got the right stimulus amount” click “Continue”.
You will be asked about the amounts of first round and second round stimulus payments you received. If you did not receive a payment enter “0”.
TurboTax will then calculate the amount of stimulus payment remaining that you are still entitled to get.
Any stimulus amount remaining due to you will show as a credit on line 30 of the 1040.
This is one of the things I found when I was googling for help - it doesn’t seem to apply to the latest TurboTax.
There is no “Federal Review” at the top of the screen. When I go into the “Review” process that is there, it doesn’t lead to anything about stimulus check payments.
I don’t know… 
OK, fixed it !
I went into the “Review” process and after clicking through several pages and looking around, I stumbled on to the “Federal Review” page. After getting down into that a little bit, there was a page asking about the receipt of the stimulus money. I clicked “Yes” and the refund amount went away.
So, looks like everything is OK now.
Tax returns are not being accepted yet. Wait a week or so until the next update. It is possible that Turbo Tax isn’t properly handling stimulus yet.
Oh, no rush. I’m not going to be filing for at least a month. I just got the TurboTax app and wanted to get started with things. It showing no errors now so all I need to do is verify the information as the 1099’s and stuff arrive.
HRBlock has dates posted for when the software will be updated.
Updates for Stimulus related questions are due 1-20.
They also have dates for EIC for 1-27.
And underpayment penalties scheduled for 2-3.
I am sure TT is close to this same schedule.
Most of the state software is not ready either.
If you are using any tax software package check for updates whenever you open the software.
Yes, but I should think that the program will check for any updates since the disk went in the box, as part of the setup process. I know that TurboTax does that. And I think that the updating process takes as long as installing the original program. Actually, I think that TurboTax looks for any updates every time you start the program.
Bill
If you are using any tax software package check for updates whenever you open the software.
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Yes, but I should think that the program will check for any updates since the disk went in the box, as part of the setup process. I know that TurboTax does that. And I think that the updating process takes as long as installing the original program. Actually, I think that TurboTax looks for any updates every time you start the program.
TaxAct seems to do that too. It does it silently, so I do not always trust it, so I do it manually too.