FYI - to anybody else who reads this thread.
I spent about an hour on the phone with a specialist. They had no solution for why my payment could not be authorized.
So I went to taxaudit.com, logged in to my account, and purchased this year's audit defense there, credit card processed just fine, first time - but it cost me $49.99 instead of $45 which is what to would have cost via the Turbotax program.
So that only left me with the State return, which I wanted to e-file for a cost of $20. Same error - can't authorize payment. So the program gives an option to pay through a specialist and get a code back indicating it has been paid. The specialist took my billing address and credit card info, and on her computer - was also unable to charge my credit card - we tried more than one card too.
So the problem still exists - my guess is that it is some backend processing issue in turbotax the payment processor.
Only solution is that I will have to paper file my State return.
First time in 20+ years of using Turbotax that I've had a service failure like this. Life's not perfect, but we move on. I know they'll fix it. I otherwise love the product - always have, and we'll be back using it next year!
