Nice try, but this is not an issue of the IRS "not liking the number". That would only be an issue once submitted to the IRS and it's not getting that far. Your system is only checking for "a valid FEIN" format, which your developers have determined to mean it can't be all zeros. This is an issue with the inflexibility of the system. I was able to find instances of people complaining about the same thing last year.
Turns out the correct answer is "if your form has a FEIN of all zeros, delete them all. TurboTax will recognize it isn't a required field". Unfortunately, I discovered this too late and now the software won't let me fix and e-file because it thinks I already mailed it in.
