California state -- principal residence is in foreign country -- entries not allowed in TurboTax

[dw42]

I am a California resident working and living in Japan for past years.   Always used TT to do e-filing of taxes but this year when asked for my Principal Residence Information (form 540), I select "No" as usual and can enter my Japan street address and city but TT requires a selection for State and it also requires a selection for my county in California.  The "Learn More" note says to leave the state and county selected as blank but TT will not process this in the final review check.  I tried just leaving my Japan address in the 540 form with state selected as California and my county selected and this gets me past the TT final review but then I get an email back after e-submittal that my return has been rejected.  How do I get past this?

[rryanabtw]

I have the same issue.

In the learn more button it tells us to leave them state and county as blank.

But it won't let me continue if I leave them blank.

Or TurboTax will keep bring me back when I go to the review part and can't file my tax .

Can someone help me?

date: 03/22/2021

[CarissaM]

Please follow the instructions here to enter a foreign address. 

If you need additional assistance, please click here to contact customer support. 

[cjwiemer]

I have the same problem. The solution given simply provides instruction for entering a foreign address. This works for the Federal form. But the query stated that the California form is rejected with a foreign address as principal residence. My California form is also being rejected on this basis.

A solution is still needed.

[DaveF1006]

You will need to mail your California State return with an explanation why you are mailing. 

[cjwiemer]

This answer is unsatisfactory. The problem is a flaw in Turbo Tax. I would like a refund. You have fallen short on repeated promises that "We're here to help." I will seek other methods of filing.

[DaveF1006]

 Please use this link to  Contact Us to contact live customer support.

[cjwiemer]

I was able to circumvent the flaw in Turbo Tax by filing directly using CalFile for FREE.  There was no problem entering a foreign address. I had already registered with the CA Franchise Tax Board for the purpose of making estimated payments. Now that I know how easy it is to file directly through FTB, I will never use Turbo Tax for state filing again.

[atulkshirsagar]

This is late for 2021 tax filing but I want to make sure that next year if anyone comes across this problem, they know the solution. 

So we had this same issue. I spent hours figuring out the issue with Turbotax support. Finally, I was lucky to get a right Expert who understood the problem and helped me resolve it right before the tax day ..Thank god! 

We also had foreign status in 2021 but in turbotax personal info, we had selected California as the state of resident so Turbotax had chosen form 540(filed for CA resident)  for us. Thus it required the state and the county of the residency. 

Once we chose "foreign country" as the state of resident in personal info section, Turbotax generated for 540NR - form for non residents. This fixed my issues as TT did not ask for state in USA and county for that address. 

Hope this helps. 

This has been a big headache for us so if anyone needs further help I can provide more details.