Intuit Turbotax Weirdness: What Happened ?!?!

[BrooklineBiker]

Tonight I  had a weird experience with TurboTax. I'm hoping someone can tell me what they think happened and what to do next.

I had set TurboTax to efile. I had my returns proofed and ready to file. I then logged off for a bit.

When I logged back in things were weird. The screen then asked me if I wanted to file. I clicked continue.

I assumed I had a bunch more screens to go. Normally when I logged off, TurboTax would make me redo a bunch of steps. It would make me reconfirm choices I had made and previously reconfirmed. It was painfully slow and tedious but I could see what was going on with building the return.

Of note, I hadn't entered any bank account information to pay my balances due.

BOOM! Instead, I got a screen saying I had filed. I was flabbergasted. I did some checking in the TurboTax system and the returns had been sent to the IRS and my state.

What happened? Were the taxes paid? How? Was my debit card charged? (I paid my taxes with it on Turbo Tax last year.) I don't see a bank withdrawal on my accounts. Was I involuntarily signed up for their Credit Karma proxy and that is how payment was made?


EDIT: I did a little more digging and the returns say that  I need to mail a check to the IRS and my state as well as the return. Is my return going to be late? I called Intuit and the customer service rep was too ill-trained to be helpful and refused to conenct me to a manager.

[phildonnia]

You're probably right; it sent in your return with no payment; and you'll receive a bill from the IRS.  I don't want to bad-mouth TT based on my own limited experience with it, but this kind of stuff is what I've come to expect from popular tax-prep software in general.  You may want to hit the TT forums for advice -- or if nothing else, to vent about it.

You'll probably want to make a payment before you get the bill.  You can do this at the IRS website so you don't have to mail a check, and you'll get an instant receipt.

If you get late-payment penalties, you can try to abate them by filing Form 843 and explaining what happened. 
If a "for cause" abatement doesn't work, look into requesting a "first-time abatement", which is where the IRS removes the penalties just to be nice.  I've used it successfully before.

But assuming you've filed on time, the late payment penalties are not too bad; I believe it's currently 0.5% of the amount due, for each month you're late.  If that comes out to a few dollars, you probably just want to pay up, send a nasty letter to Intuit, and move on.

[MustacheAndaHalf]

Search for "IRS direct pay", and trust a search engine over a random link in a forum.

IRS Direct Pay can withdraw money from your bank account.  You will need to be looking at your tax return from last year, because the IRS website will ask you to confirm details.  That would be the fastest way, and you can get email / bank confirmation when it happens (probably the next business day).