54276

How do I correct this critical diagnostic and continue to amend the return?

Why are those amounts negative?

Very little income but forgot to report to me unemployment she received. Still resulted in negative after standard deduction. But we need to report the unemployment so how do I proceed to amend the return?

I am getting the same diagnostic; the 1040X is placing a negative number into Taxable Income instead of the zero per instructions.  

I paged through 29 of 44 pages of Lacerte Diagnostics to find this very unhelpful insight into ref #54276.  

Overriding with a zero in screen 59 does nothing to fix this.  This is a calculation error in Lacerte it appears.  

Since the error refers to "e-file:  Form 1040-X:  the Original amount and Correct amount for the following items cannot be negative for e-file purposes: QBI, Taxable Income and EIC ref 54276", and the 1040X is showing a negative Taxable Income instead of a zero per IRS instructions on the 1040X itself, with QBI and EIC as positive amounts, I am thinking that this is the problem, as it is the only negative number in the Original amount or Correct amount columns of any of these scenarios.  There appears to be no fix for this.  Please advise.

I just encountered this diagnostic for the first time, due to foreign earned income exclusion.  Has anyone tried suppressing this critical diagnostic in efile?

Has anyone found a work-around for this yet?  Or can this be ignored and e-filed anyway?

Yes, putting in a "-1" for the override on taxable income cleared this diagnostic for me.  Found the solution in a Facebook group "Lacerte Rescuers!"  Highly recommend.

-1 is the Lacerte version of zero.

Thanks Karl, I will give that another try.  I tried that a while back and it still wasn't working.  I did talk with Lacerte last week and they say they weren't aware of this and told me how to override.  I sent the file to them and hopefully this will be corrected in the next update, etc.  Also, thanks for the Facebook Group, I will look that up as well!!  Have a great day!

February 2023

I gambled on the old Lacerte trick of entering

-1

in the field on Screen 59 of the 2021 software and it worked.  Taxable Income lines are now empty - no values - and my diagnostic went away.  Logically you would thing -1 would enter a negative one dollar in the field, but this old trick seems to still be an override in this instance.