Why am being prompted to report communal income and to upgrade to the self-employment version of turbo tax when I have no communcal income nor am I self employed?

If you've entered an amount from any of the boxes on the slips listed here, you have what the CRA considers to be self-employment or business income:

• T4 slip: box 81, 82 or 83
• T4A slip: box 20 or 48
• T4A slip: box 28 and you selected Yes to the question Does the income declared in Box 028 consist of fees collected for services you provided? in TurboTax Online
• T3 slip: box 24 (foreign business income)

If you have an amount in any of these boxes, TurboTax will ask additional questions to report the income as self-employment/business income. You only need to answer basic information, such as business name and address (can be your own), industry code, and fiscal period (Jan 01 to December 31). 

Thanks Susan for the explanation.  Absolutely none of what you identified below applies to me yet I am being forced to upgrade to self-employment version too.  I am not self-employed. I do not have 'communal income'. Turbo Tax used to be absolutely fantastic, now it seems like a cash grab. I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

In order to help you with this situation, we believe your best option is to contact our telephone support team for further assistance, as they have the option to view your screen to help resolve the issue. To contact them, please follow this link: Contact Us. 

​​​​​​​Thank you for choosing TurboTax.

I got the same communal income notice and prompt to upgrade.

There is no apparent reason why I would need that, like the other comments.

I had two T3s auto-downloaded and both had in Box 26 a total of $0.00. However, there was a little padlock symbol by each of them. I clicked the Box 26 on each T3 and manually just re-entered 0.00.

Not sure if that did it, but after that I no longer got the no need to upgrade message?

I meant to say in my post, after I manually entered the 0.00 in Box 26 of each T3, then I no longer got the upgrade prompt.

Rick, thanks for the reminder of this bug workaround - it worked!
I just noticed a note to myself from last year that the same or similar T3 Box 26 TurboTax bug was present then.

It is so disappointing that Intuit can't fix such obvious and well documented bugs that are reported by users.

It makes me question the general quality of their software.  Why am I relying on them??  

+1, thanks for pointing this out Rick! I also received the "you must upgrade to TurboTax Self-Employed to report communal income" erroneously (when filing a combined return for my spouse and I, after importing T3s from Wealthsimple).

I followed the steps in your workaround (going back and manually "editing" each T3 to indicate 0.00 in Box 26 and the "communal income" box below it, even though the interface already displayed 0.00 for both).

After that, it worked out without requiring the "Self-Employed" update. This looks like a technical issue on TurboTax's part (when importing T3's, deciding that "undefined" communal income is "more than 0", or something) and it's frustrating that the result is, their customers over-paying. 😬

Thanks so much Rick for figuring out this workaround – really appreciate it!