I’ll return to COVID-19 tax legislation policy topics soon, but wanted to note an item I noticed a few weeks ago in filing my own return. In messing around with TurboTax, I discovered that it defaults to preparing a Form 1040-SR if the taxpayer or spouse is age 65 or older. I assume that likely confuses many affected people because they never heard of the form and might think it means they are paying more or paying less.

There is no difference between the 1040 and 1040-SR besides the “SR” and font size. The SR form is not the idea of IRS who was already working to get rid of the 1040-EZ and 1040-A when Congress added 1040-SR starting for 2019 returns. For more on that, please see my 7/29/19 blog post.

Perhaps other tax prep software is doing the same – defaulting to 1040-SR if the taxpayer is old enough, rather than giving a choice or defaulting to 1040.
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