After years of misery and many phone calls over this EIN for a foreign government payer of the equivalent of our social security--in my case, from Japan--the IRS finally referred me to a dept. with a name something like "Difficult Questions," where I was told that there IS no such thing as an "Payer's Federal Identification Number" for a foreign government. It makes sense, since a social security type "pension" is not remuneration for doing a job.
That knowledge, however, doesn't save the poor TurboTax user from this line getting pinked out unless he/she happens to enter the right 9 digits. Some years, I have found helpful suggestions from Turbo Tax users. If I remember right, for a while, 12-9999999 worked, then 12-3456789, but for the 2023 return, it didn't. It was purely by guessing that I hit on WHAT HAS WORKED THIS YEAR: 12-1111111. I just now used it and was able to e-file both fed. and state returns.
Why Turbo Tax would let a problem like this torment users for years (A pinked-out line forces you to file by snail mail, which can have its own problems) is beyond me. If only we receivers of this special sort of pension could simply right-click on the line and choose to leave it blank!
