As I think everyone is aware, this is a bug in TurboTax. I tried four times with different changes and got the same rejection and I know all the info is correct. Due to current travel restrictions and the fact that I am helping my mother in law whose husband died last year, e-file was really the only way to go. As others have suggested I redid the taxes using FreeTaxUSA and both Fed and State were accepted. No issues at all.
I have a suggestion for where TT should start looking for their software bug. FreeTaxUSA requires that you enter the last year AGI and Pins for both the surviving spouse and the decedent. TT only asks for the surviving spouse’s Pin as the previous poster states, you have no option to add the descendants Pin in TT. This is where I would start looking because clearly it has nothing to do with the IRS or the SSN being locked. My mother in law checked the IRS web account and they have my father in law as deceased so clearly the SSN is locked yet we were still able to file the taxes.
One warning, although FreeTaxUSA is very similar to TT in terms of the layout and incremental steps to fill in data, it is not as user friendly for complicated situations such as having a home office and business expenses. You can easily import your 2018 TT .pdf and it worked flawlessly with almost all prior year info populated and available for comparison but not all past year carry overs for some obscure items always populate automatically. So you need to pay attention during the interview questions to ensure you don’t miss manually entering some items. If you have already done your 2019 taxes in TT you can just follow along in FreeTaxUSA and fill in everything. It’s a bit of a pain, but the Federal is free and state only costs $14.99. If you have a fairly simple return, it should only take 30 minutes or less.
TT was very good about refunding my $24.99 for the failed state e-file purchase, as you would expect no less. But all in all a very disappointing situation from a company whose software I have been using since the early 90s before they were acquired.
