I ran into the same issue, i.e., I want to itemize instead of taking the higher standard deduction, in order to get an overall lower tax considering both federal and state. TT customer service identified the problem with the automatic insertion of $600 as being a bug that is under investigation as Investigation #19984. TT has a workaround that involves first putting in a higher number, say $700, manually and then erasing it, and not doing any further 'reviews.' Yes, it worked for me and allows a correct Federal and State tax return to issue, but it will not allow e-filing because when you get to the e-file button, it pops up that there is 0 in line 12b which is what it should be, but the bug apparently thinks otherwise. TT told me to sit still as they have 'thousands' of bugs and are working on this, and I have until Oct to file the return by which time hopefully the bug will be fixed. Seems strange though. I suppose one could just print out the correct federal and state returns and mail them, but that is not what we are paying TT to do.
