While I won't be able to attempt efiling until the end of the month, TurboTax has never complained about Schedule A being blank for me. I played around with some of the questions in Step-by-Step mode to try to figure out why that is. Answering "Yes" to "Do you have any New York State Wages" causes a "NY ST Wgs/SE Wk" form to be generated. I'm also fairly certain this worksheet is automatically generated if NY wages appear on your W2.
Assuming only RSU income is being allocated, then none of the allocation methods for this worksheet are appropriate. If you select "Allocate over Multiple Years", then TurboTax will require IT-203-F, Schedule A to be filled out. This is not what we want. In forms mode, if you right click on "New York Wages" on "NY ST Wgs/SE Wk" in Part I, and select "About TP Wages/Salaries-1", we get some helpful text after describing all the various ways that the income can be allocated:
Part I - State Wages:
This is transferred from the federal Form W-2 if box 15 contains a "NY". If the methods outlined above do not allow accurate calculation of the amount taxed in New York State, enter an adjusting amount in "New York Wages" column and allocate it 100% to New York.
The methods outlined are not appropriate! So instead, we can enter an adjusting amount (negative value) as a separate line item, and then the (corrected) total of New York Wages will be carried over to Line 1, Column D on the "Alloc Wks". If you've previously filled out Line 1, then you'll need to delete the value there, and it'll be auto-calculated again from "NY ST Wgs/SE Wk". After Line 1 is correct, offset the gain from the IT-203-F Schedule B calculation in the Smart Worksheet to zero out Line 7 as the Schedule B income has been allocated to Line 1 from our "NY ST Wgs/SE Wk" adjusting amount.
This *should* provide for an accurate return that can be efiled when only IT-203-F Schedule B needs to be filled out.
