Clarifying the issue. After I hit the "transmit" button to send the returns to the Feds and Ca state, the program does another check on the state and takes me thru the steps noted above. Seems like a program error to me. I've tried a couple different instantiations of the FEIN/SSN (with and without a dash). When I include the dash...program says the field should only be numbers. When I dont include the dash, program cycles back to telling me to blank out the field as noted in the original problem statement.
