Medical travel - 1 or 2

As virtually all of my clients’ medical travel is calculated using the 2: Simplified, AND the method needs to be consistent for each tax return, could the 1: Detailed and 2: Simplified, be an option at the top of medical travel screen instead of dealing with it for each trip?

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I second that!

Me too… that would save time

Thank you for the suggestion. I will log a bug to look at this for 2020.

Sarka

Despite several requests, medical travel expenses are NOT included in the optimization of medical expenses. I had an unusual scenario yesterday where the client had medical travel expenses but no other medical expenses.


but optimizations showed:

When can we expect this to be addressed?

When I have two years of medical expenses, I end up manually working through the various dates to find the optimal claim. That’s what software should be doing for me. :roll_eyes:

Your example is a very small claim - does it exceed 3% of net income? If not, then it is correct at 0.00
Or did it go to the spouse’s return?

I added $100 in regular medical expenses

and got this result

Nothing else has changed so where did the $195.84 in medical travel expenses go? They are NOT included in optimization as previously mentioned.

Try it on one of your files or a test file…

I agree that medical travel does not show up on the optimization page as a dollar value added to other medical expenses. The program still does optimize when there is only travel. I have a couple who only claim travel for medical and taxcycle does give me a warning to consider claiming on the other spouse’s return.

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If it is optimizing, it’s not doing a good a job as I have improved on their numbers sometimes substantially. Plus, if travel is including in optimization, it should be included in the total provided on that tab.

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Well look at that - I’ve always put the medical travel in the top part of the worksheet so never noticed this, but you’re right. When I moved it to the travel line, it gets lost in the ether.

@Cameron there’s a bug in the Medical Optomization as noted above

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@rosanna that warning means that if it’s on the other spouse’s return they will lose less of it via the 3% rule (the other spouse has lower net income).

I just saved a client $220 dollars today on a claim that included both travel and medical expenses.

I agree it needs to be improved. I still do all the checking for optimizing.