Is this a TurboTax mistake regarding IRA Recharacterization?

[Benjamin]

I was doing TT and saw these help boxes pop up regarding IRA recharacterizations.  I thought that recharacterizations were from Roth back to traditional--very useful in some situations. They were excellently described in the recent post by WCI to help mitigate the taxes required to pay for investments that underperform--see this post: Roth Conversion Horse Race.

TurboTax appears to have it backwards in this example. Do they have it wrong, or is there another type of IRA recharacterization that I was not aware about?

Here are screen shots of the explanations I am referring to.

 

Thanks for your help with this!

[DocBean]

Not an expert, but I'm with you...

[Benjamin]

Yes, I thought it looked incorrect. I will have to see what TurboTax says--but they are definitely not IRA experts.

 

[Spatty99]

I posted separately on an issue with Turbotax and recharacterization/conversion.  I think technically you can recharacterize in both directions...  Scottrade accidentally recharacterized my traditional IRA to Roth, so I had to recharacterize back to traditional and then convert as originally intended.  I have the 2016 1099s and 5498 forms to show it (so I'm assuming this means each rechar was legitimate).

[The White Coat Investor]

You can recharacterize a traditional to a roth or a Roth to a traditional. Both are recharacterizations.