Deleted Erroneous Tax Category and Quarterly Estimated Payment Subcategory Still Comes Back

@Coach Jon This was a known bug that Coach Natalie said had been fixed, but I couldn't find this announcement today when I searched for it.

This is a category I never had, and it keeps coming back and I keep deleting it. I've deleted it at least a couple of dozen times. What triggers it to come back is beyond me.

It is a category called Taxes and a subcategory called Quarterly Estimated Tax. I don't want them or need them. It's been around for a few months.

Thanks.

@Coach Jon That is exactly it. I have my withholdings and tax payments in another category. This erroneous one keeps coming back. I kept deleting it because it was fixed, so I will post a screen shot next time it comes back.

But remember my category is called Tribute and refers both to renderings to Caesar as well as to God. I don't have a Tax category per se.

@Coach Jon

It came back. Here's the screenshot:

Here's what the Subcategory says to me:

I deleted it again. Here's my category:

@DryHeat I will probably try some things when it comes back. Right now, I am trying to discover what triggers it to come back. Usually happens within a few hours, but hasn't yet this morning.

Things that don't trigger it:

1. Closing and reopening app.
2. Signing out and signing in.
3. Using the phone app: updating, closing and reopening.
4. Fiddling with categories, rearranging or renaming.
5. Downloading new transactions.
6. Adding a manual transaction.

@Coach Jon Well, there are no transactions coming into these "default" categories. I assign all of those to other categories and deleted unused categories (or changed their names) 4 years ago. However, so far today it hasn't come back, and I am not sure why, but I have a theory.

I don't use a catch-all Taxes category because I put sales taxes in Spending, property tax in housing costs and personal property tax in automobile costs. So that only leaves Withholding and the only one I now have being retired is Federal Income Tax.

I will keep an eye out for it and keep deleting it. And will keep you updated as to what I discover. I will update you on my theory if and when it pans out.

Thanks.

@Coach Natalie Here it is. I cannot rename it or reorganize it. If I do, it just creates another one. There aren't supposed to be categories in Simplifi that show up in my categories list that I cannot delete or reorganize.

This isn't like the built-in ones e.g, Transfer, Credit Card Balance, etc.

Edit: This is a weird category in my category list (those above are not) and it is only the subcategory that is required. See below.

@Coach Jon @Coach Natalie

There are several points I want to make about this bug, which I believe is a bug that has now become a feature.

First of all, I was working with Support for a month on this. I was told that I could delete the category. Indeed it is the only category in my category list that I cannot delete, and it is a subcategory that has four words with it starting with federal, which is dumb because it gets confused with other categories. Actually I can delete it but it comes back, which means it wasn't meant to be required.

This bug was introduced in October in a spillover from QBP and Coach Natalie confirmed it was a bug and confirmed that it had been fixed. It didn't show up for me until after that. I have a long memory.

I sought a workaround as an expediency because I always figured out that this bug would be fixed. Support told me I could delete it but I needed to make sure there were no transactions tied to it (I found one) and no recurring reminders. I spent several weeks deleting caches, deleting all my apps and deleting all the data on every one of my devices (Support thought that was why it was coming back) until I could make sure it was a bug.

Today Support told me it is required, so . . .

Why is this one category required out of all the categories that we started with, all of which, I deleting, renamed and rearranged when i started with Simplifi in 2021. The things I require with Simplifi is that I can delete transactions, split them, reassign them, rename categories, delete categories and reorganize them. Now after having 5 years of data, all of a sudden this is the one solitary category that we must have and it is in a subcategory of a category I don't need and which is illogical in my way of doing things.

I don't need a taxes category because I put the tax where it belongs: in automobiles, spending, housing, etc.

Questions:

1. Why is this the only required category in Simplifi? To what feature is it connected? It is not connected to the taxes report, because I can turn it off from that.
2. Why not just make shopping a necessary category or federal taxes or whatever? Once you start telling us what categories we must have. When does it stop?
3. Why is it the only category that cannot be renamed? Reorganized? I actually could use the category but I don't name anything with four words much less one that starts with Federal. I keep my categories to one or two words.

Yes, I was working with Support on this until today and today they changed their tune. Coach Natalie told me to reopen the case here so I have. I am sure they will fix this sooner or later, but it is a mystery how this started anyhow.

Until now we've always had 100% control over our category list in Simplifi. Sure we had the Transfer, Credit Card Payment and stuff like that but none of that shows up in our category list.

And as you say, you can delete it but it will come back and you cannot rename that awful "Federal Estimated Tax Payment". I don't think this was really intended to be in Simplifi. And flies in the face of the philosophy of the program.

I would have been back sooner to this in the community but Support was assuring me it could be deleted and the coaches here were busy with the Accounts and Savings Goals that went berserk two weeks ago.

@DryHeat You are correct that it cannot be deleted but you can delete the parent category, which makes no sense. I can see no reason for this permanent subcategory in Simplifi, not QBP. And up until today Support agreed with me.

I tried renaming taxes and putting the thing into my other category. It does no good. It recreates itself.

If I rename taxes to ZZZ to put it at the end, it recreates itself with another subcategory of Federal Estimated Tax Payment. You can end up with hundreds of them. They're like tribbles.

And you cannot tell me this was intended.

Oh, and still I don't know if anyone with Plain Simplifi besides me has noticed this. No one has chimed in.

Edit: I am sure they will make a change at some point to let us hide this if they cannot let us delete it, but that surely perplexes me why it's there. Waiting to hear something back from the coaches.

@Coach Jon Thank you. I was a while getting back to this because I was working with Support and thought I had it resolved on several occasions.

I also have the transcripts from Support where they tell me the bug has to do with the Tax Planner. I also told them I didn't have the Tax Planner as that was part of QBP. It convinces me this has bled over from that and is NOT supposed to be required in regular Simplifi.

@Coach Jon Thanks. I don't understand why this is the one category that is default for the Tax Planner that we don't even have in plain Simplifi. I don't think there should be such things. When Quicken Classic had a Tax Planner in the Windows version, we defined what categories we wanted to use. Please pass this on to the developers. It is bad design.

But I appreciate that they are going to find a way for us to hide these categories in lists, etc. I can go with that.

Thanks!