I'm not sure if I did something wrong or not, or if this a new set-up, but state just took their huge amount owed, and now I have to wait 3 weeks to essentially receive the same amount back from federal. If this happened last year, I would have just owed $200 (for ex.) because state and federal "talked" or were combined. Any insight?
Your federal and state refunds or tax due are never combined as one payment or one refund. You misunderstood, perhaps as a result of being confused by that summary that TurboTax gives you at the end. Federal and state are entirely separate entities. Your federal refund comes from the U.S. Treasury after you file a federal return with the IRS. Your state refund comes from your state after you file a tax return with your state. If you owe federal tax due, you pay it to the IRS. If you owe state tax due, you pay it to the state.
Your state tax due cannot be paid from your federal refund.
It is not possible to pay your state tax due from your federal refund, nor is it possible to pay a federal tax due from a state refund. The federal and state treasuries are completely separate from each other. You may have seen a TurboTax summary of your federal and state amounts that confused you into thinking one was “paying” the other. It is not. If you have federal tax due you can pay by mailing your payment, having the payment taken out of a designated bank account, or you can pay directly on the IRS website. You must pay your state tax due using the state’s preferred method of receiving payment. For most states that will be by making a payment to the state’s own tax website, or by mailing a check or money order.
Thanks. I completely understand they're separate entities, but normally TurboTax has handled the transaction for me (if I owed for state, but earned for federal, they'd take my federal to pay state and pay me the difference), but it didn't happen that way this year - I must have submitted them separately without knowing it. Thanks for the info.