Box 17 shows how much of your tax was sent to the state in box 15. If box 17 is empty, then no tax was sent to that state, so the entry in box 15 (and 16, if one) doesn't need to be there.
When people suggest putting the federal EIN in box 15, that's only because there is an amount in box 17, and they want to move on past the error checking.
And since the IRS does not care about what's in boxes 15-20, you don't have to worry about hurting your federal return, no matter what you do. What you are trying to do is get past the TurboTax review which is trying to make sure you don't have a typo.
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