Why does turbotax think I have rental income?

If you've entered an amount from any of the boxes on the slips listed here, you have what the Canada Revenue Agency (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 (needs to say NO to indicate no self-employment)
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.

One that would be easily overlooked. When entering the amount on box 28 for the T4A, there are two (2) Box 28s. It can accidentally be entered into the wrong Box 28. This entry error triggers the warning that states there is self-employment income. Once the value is entered into the other Box 28, the warning during the review is removed.

Thank you for choosing TurboTax.

I have not entered anything in those boxes and I don't have a T4A.

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. When you are asked if you wish to receive an email say NO then say "speak to a representative" and hold the line. If you do not resolve the issue please ask for an escalation.

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

Rather than wait on the phone and troubleshoot a bull**bleep** issue, I decided to spend 15 minutes filing through another company. They imported all my documents automatically from the CRA and charged me half the amount I was going to pay with you, to do it. I'll stick with them from now on. Thanks.

I have the exact same issue. Like the previous post, I do not have rental income, nothing in boxes 81-83 on T4, nor do I have a T4A. What gives?

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. When asked if you wish to receive an email say NO then say "speak to a representative" then hold the line. If you do not get a resolution, please ask for an escalation so an investigation is done.

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

I called the service desk.  The solution is to not import your previous year's tax data.  Basically you need to start from scratch and not import from a previous year.  You should, however, still be able to download forms from CRA.  It's irritating Intuit could not simply post this information to the chat and waste my time calling in.

I also asked for a coupon code so I could simply purchase the Self Employment option, but for a reduced price.  There agents have no means for doing this.  

Thanks sir! This fixed it for me. After getting stuck with it thinking i had rental income and needed to upgrade and pay $60 to proceed with my return i tried returning to the page and selecting "NO RENTAL PROPERTY OR INCOME" Many times. Confirmed everytime that it showed a $0 for rental income and still it wouldnt proceed. 

I spent hours frustrated because its outside of their support hours and seriously considered paying their RANSOM for me to file my taxes and end the suffering. In the end importing no information from previous years or CRA and manually entering the info from my T4. (I only have a T4, should be the easiest tax return ever) it finally worked. 

However.. in my searching for solutions i found similar community posts & bug submissions dating back as far as 2019 and the ISSUE REMAINS. For a bug so simple to remain unfix for so long which just so happens to waste peoples time until they pay a RANSOM for a service they dont need.. This appears VERY MALICIOUS so i strongly urge anyone who runs into this issue to REPORT TurboTax's NETFILE service to Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre - [phone number removed] (as i have already)

We understand that you’ve seen the increased TurboTax prices and have some concerns.. Throughout tax season, pricing for TurboTax products are routinely adjusted to meet market demands and fluctuations. While a price increase is not always the most ideal situation, TurboTax is still committed to providing you with easy-to-use software that will allow you to prepare and file your tax returns with ease and accuracy. 

Its absurd that the program forces you to complete the entire return before trying to ransom you for the upgrade fee!!! I've gone back and removed the rental income fees, and the boxes81-83 on my T4 are entirely blank. Had to start from scratch and waste my time creating a brand new return not using last years info in order to get the simple filing to work

Next year I'll be using another software, the money grubbing ways of TurboTax is not for me any longer!!!

If last year was your final year of rental income- there was a box to check off so that this wouldn't transfer to this year's return. 

Thank you for your feedback & for choosing TurboTax.