Can't open TurboTax 2022 on Mac Studio running Monterey 12.5.1

Lots of people are using silicon Macs for TurboTax. You can see this on the Intuit TurboTax Discussion Forums, where this was a topic some months ago. And see my comments below regarding Rosetta.

Several suggestions:

Update to the latest version of Monterey, 12.5.1 is not the latest, 12.6.2 is the latest. Apple fixes bugs in each update.

Should that not work, contact Intuit for assistance. TurboTax is supposed to run on Big Sur or later. I'm not sure I can provide much direct assistance because I am running it on a Mac with Ventura.

You can also run Etrecheck (free download), which provides diagnostic information about your Mac in a generic format without any identifying information. You can verify that before posting the output here. Post the output with the Additional text button below. There are many experts reading here who may notice something problematic that is installed on your Mac. That seems to be the most likely thing because so many people use TurboTax and don't report such problems.

Finally, do you have Rosetta installed? See this post

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/taxes/discussion/turbotax-mac-2022-system-requirements/00/2787700/page/2

The user installed Rosetta and then was able to run the Intel version of TurboTax.

See Apple's instructions for Rosetta and Mac Intel software: If you need to install Rosetta on your Mac - Apple Support

See also this:

https://isapplesiliconready.com/app/TurboTax

It looks like the uninstallers did not completely uninstall these softwares! I have never seen that myself, but have read in Apple Discussions about others who installed these types of utilities and then were unsuccessful in uninstalling them after advancing the MacOS. The AVAST item is truly disturbing. I am concerned one of these items that stubbornly remain is causing the TurboTax problem, although I can't be 100% sure. Although you aren't seeing anything in the Login Settings, there are many other places that launch software and processes automatically, so those items are obviously still there, somewhere.

Is this your personal Mac, or is it provided by an employer? If it is an employer provided Mac, it may be configured in a way where you cannot delete these things. If it is set up for am employer, you will need to obtain a different Mac that you set up "clean" and it will run TurboTax.

There are several things you can try now, assuming it is 100% your own personal Mac and not configured previously by someone else.

Boot into Safe Mode and try the uininstallers again. Are the residual pieces gone now?

Did you try creating a new user and try running TurboTax under that account?

Download and run Find Any File to try to search in all areas of the Mac for vestiges of these tools. You can try to then delete them but some report that the Mac's system integrity protection prevents their deletion. It is possible for a user to disable system integrity protection, delete the offending items, then reenable it, but frankly, you may be getting into some dangerous territory there since that protection is intended to protect you against deleting things in protected areas on the Mac.

If none of the above can truly rid your Mac of those intrusive software tools, then perhaps someone else here with more experience than me can suggest next steps.

I know if this was my own Mac, I would then make at least two backups, one with Time Machine and another using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner. Then I would follow Apple's instruction for resetting a Mac to factory settings: Erase your Mac and reset it to factory settings - Apple Support

Then I would set it up like a new Mac and migrate ONLY user accounts and files from one of the backups. Everything else will have to be reinstalled fresh. I feel like your Mac's system has been damaged by those security tools. The AVAST message should NOT be appearing and the VPN should have been completely uninstalled.

Before doing anything this drastic, wait to see if someone else has a better suggestion.

There are several items in the Etrecheck report that COULD be related to your issues:

• You have some sort of AVAST security suite installed, which includes the anti-virus Fileshield and also something called AvastPacketForwarder which is concerning because when TurboTax first starts up it immediately connects to Intuit servers to do several things: it checks for program and tax form updates, and it also needs to retrieve your tax info if you are using their servers for your taxes. When you select the option to "encrypt" your tax data, this results in everything being stored on Intuit servers. Which I frankly don't recommend for privacy reasons, but that's maybe a different discussion topic. In any case, anti-virus programs are known to create a number of different types of conflicts on Macs; for one thing, they are not needed (you can't install a virus on a Mac now because the OS is in a sealed read-only volume, actually a snapshot volume), and they are also quite intrusive on Macs, note the fact that you have multiple kexts installed, those are kernel extensions and they can wreak havoc on the way a Mac runs and operates. The AvastPacketForwarder sounds like a VPN type of program.
• But you also have a different VPN running as well, GlobalProtect. It has its own sets of kexts, posing another opportunity to interfere with the MacOS or with Avast.
• It is POSSIBLE that one or the other (or both) of these VPNs is somehow interfering with traffic to/from Intuit's servers, thus interfering with TurboTax. (But I would have expected some sort of error message, but that's speculation.) Do you have other internet or packet management active, or perhaps something in your router setup that could be interfering?
• Aside from the above Avast and multiple VPNs, what you have in your Etrecheck looks very much like mine. I am running Ventura and TurboTax 2022 with no issues.

My suggestion: unless you MUST have one of those VPNs active for connection to an employer network, I suggest completely uninstalling Avast and the Palo Alto Software utilities (GlobalProtect etc.). This will require running uninstallers from those vendors. Turning them "off" is not enough. We have also seen posts from some Mac users who complain about not being able to completely uninstall Avast and utilities like it, even with the vendor provided uninstaller. If you need one of them for work-mandated VPN, uninstall it anyway to see if this eliminates the TurboTax problem. You can always reinstall the VPN later. I would say you should completely remove Avast and never put it back. Software like that is so intrusive that even if you can have things work with it, whenever there is a future MacOS update, it may stop working or cause mysterious problems. And it serves no purpose on a Mac. The cure here is much worse than the disease.

There may be something else interfering with TurboTax but I did not see anything else potentially problematic in your Etrecheck output. Others may chime in here to point out something I missed.

Additional info: Intuit/TurboTax even acknowledges that some security or anti-virus programs can prevent TurboTax from running properly. See this for example:

https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/security-risk/security-software-turbotax/L0zdImpg8_US_en_US

You can also read through this article, including the "alternative solution," but I don't think they apply to your problem:

https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/accounting-bookkeeping/turbotax-mac-open-installed/L1ayjUFwS_US_en_US?uid=le101snj

Finally, I think this is a unlikely long shot but it would not hurt to try: create a new user and try running TurboTax under that new user. I'm also assuming that Apple had you do standard troubleshooting steps such as booting into safe mode, etc. already.

I am thinking you should contact Intuit for support at this point. You could try this, which installs Rosetta 2 from a terminal command line:

https://osxdaily.com/2020/12/04/how-install-rosetta-2-apple-silicon-mac/

(Maybe reinstalls in your case)

Etrecheck is open source and provided by a trusted Apple Discussions contributor. It is recommended all the time here and I have used it myself.

Michael,Michael,Motorcycle: Similar issues with TurboTax...I spent three hours with a TurboTax "expert" we tried several things; mostly the same as you. NO LUCK.

Next I went to Apple support, @hours when they finally said it was a third party software issue and basically told me to F#$% off. BTW: they don't support Monterey on older iMac's any more...... The latest Monterey is 12.6.3

I fixed the problem much like what the other guy said to do. I logged out of my main user and form a new user, reinstalled the TurboTax software and it worked. To make things easier, I made an Alis of the tax folder and placed it in this user group. All seems to be fixed.

I've been using TurboTax since the early 90's and never had an issue like this. I use other intuit products in my business and personal life. (I'm never going to buy another Intuit product again.). I've spent several hours comparing the two user groups to identify the software or setting that is causing the issue. NO LUCK SO FAR!

I'll post any finding I may make to resolve this issue.

gee3056 wrote:

I fixed the problem much like what the other guy said to do. I logged out of my main user and form a new user, reinstalled the TurboTax software and it worked. To make things easier, I made an Alis of the tax folder and placed it in this user group. All seems to be fixed.

I've been using TurboTax since the early 90's and never had an issue like this. I use other intuit products in my business and personal life. (I'm never going to buy another Intuit product again.).

Sorry you encountered all that, and I'm very glad you found a workaround. However by creating a new user and finding that it worked there simply shows that something installed with the original user, or some aspect of how that original user account was set up, created a conflict that prevented TurboTax from running. I don't think this should be blamed on Intuit nor on Apple necessarily; it means some other third party element is incompatible with the combination of TurboTax and that specific version of Monterey. This sort of thing could happen with other tax software or with PCs, or other versions of MacOS. Remember, the original poster had various anti-virus and VPN background software that he was UNABLE to uninstall completely. I can't prove it but it seems that such intrusive items (it is intrusive when a user is unable to remove them completely from his/her own computer!) might interfere with normal computer operation.