The short answer to your question is No. I was unable to finds a box 12a on either of my forms 1099-R.
The issue is that the TurboTax error message should read that the "State Tax Withheld cannot be greater than or equal to the Gross Distribution NOR (not "or") the State Distribution".
This is key to understanding the TurboTax efile blockage since my 1099-R forms both downloaded into TurboTax with State Distribution boxes that were blank (that's box 16 on my 1099-R forms; not box 14 as some replies have indicated).
TurboTax appears to have a coding error and is checking both the Gross Distribution box and the State Distribution to see if the State Tax amount is greater than or equal to either. If the 1099-R State Distribution box is blank, TurboTax assumes a value of $0.00 and blocks efiling with the 1099-R error indication.
To fix this issue, in TurboTax, I returned to the Federal portion and edited both of my 1099-R downloaded forms to enter the value of the Gross Distribution box into the blank State Distribution box (again, this was box 16 on my 1099-R forms, not box 14). Once I did that for both of my 1099-R forms, I was able to efile.
