Hello. Thank you for your response. At this point I have already filed. I ended up filing the Federal return electronically, and the State return by mail. I discovered it really was a matter of the form intake of data not transferring into the State form from the Federal form, because there were only 3 spaces on the state form. Somewhere from the community or in FAQs, I learned that if you start to fill in the Qs about care providers for the care credit - and you leave without finishing it (let's say you stop and hit "save" and logout) - the program will not let you finish, and, in layman's terms, it gets messed up. I learned this through a search of "Form 2441" when it showed the Q: "How do I delete Form 2441?" (I think that's what it was.)
If you look at Form 2441, it has only 3 spaces to record care providers, and it has a checkbox saying, "If you have additional providers, attach additional information" (I am paraphrasing). So, that is what I did, on a printed-out paper document. This was an inconvenience, for sure, but at least I found a work-around. I will probably now be waiting weeks (months?) for my State refund. Hopefully, there will be no hang ups.
