I saw that people were commenting about this problem last year and has still not been fixed? When I select Standard Deduction in Federal I get lower Fed tax but higher Ga state. When I select itemized in Federal, my Federal taxes go up a few hundred $ but my state goes from owing $500 to a $500 refund - clearly the better choice. Why doesn't TurboTax figure that out automatically?
It would be great if every possible combination between the Federal return and all of the state returns could be programmed to maximize the amount of money in your pocket.
Given the complexity of combinations that are allowed on state returns due to different state tax laws (using different filing status than the Federal return; using itemized deductions when claiming standard deduction on the Federal; being required to itemize if itemizing on Federal; etc.) and the endless combination of state situations that you may be entering (part-year resident; non-resident; resident), it is just not possible or practical to program this into the TurboTax process. Perhaps in the future that may be done.
Luckily, you were able to manipulate the data given the tools you have within TurboTax to determine your best combination to file.
Thank you @AnnetteB6 . Agree that TurboTax makes it easy to try the different combinations and it did offer the chance to switch from standard to itemized quite late in the process so did ultimately worked for me.