In the Estimated Tax section TT has you enter Social Security under Other Income, but as part of the total, not a discreet line item. They need to be included for the Federal Estimated Tax calculation, but should be excluded for the state estimated tax calculation. How can I tell TT to do this, or trick TT into doing this?
In the end I answered this for myself. What one really has to do to deal with NY state estimated tax is go directly to the worksheet form. First, pay attention to the selection at the top of the form where you are asked to select a payment option. The default is to pay 100% (110%) of the prior year tax (eg. 2018 for 2019 estimates). If you do not change this any and all changes you make to 2019 in the detail below are not used. If you change this selection to a percentage of 2019 estimated taxes you start to be in business. Unless 2019 will be essentially identical to 2018 you would be well advised to develop the information in a spreadsheet outside TT and then enter the information in the summary lines of the TT worksheet. One of the greater failings of TT IMHO is the inability to deal with estimates thru the interview and then readily see the full set of calculations as you can with the current year taxes.