My state tax filing has the message Hidden Fed to State : Employer name has too many characters

[dibolex]

Why does it say Hidden Fed to State  :  Employer name has too many characters?

[DoninGA]

Edit your W-2 and only enter the first 4 or 5 characters of the Employer name.  The IRS only checks the Employer EIN and the first few characters of the name to verify that it is the W-2 that they have received form this employer.

[keyboardmash]

Turbo Tax desktop also shows this error message along with the state information worksheet edit window.  This implies that the state information worksheet is the source of the problem, not the W-2 data which cannot be edited from the presented screen.  TurboTax should automatically truncate the employer name as needed without prompting the user to edit a form unrelated to the source data in question.  

[JulieS · Accepted solution]

Yes, there's a limit to the number of characters you can use for the employer's name in TurboTax. The number of characters is limited to 35 (including spaces) and the only special character allowed is the hyphen ( - ).

For example if your employer listed on the W-2 form is "United Corporation of Western Pennsylvania, Ltd." you need to omit the comma ( , ) and period ( . ), as well as abbreviating or truncating the name. "United Corp of W Pennsylvania" would be an acceptable solution.

To edit your W-2 in TurboTax Online:

1. Open you return.
2. Select Federal, then Wages & Income.
3. To the right of Job (W-2), select Edit/ Add.
4. Expand the section by selecting the down arrow to the right
5. Select Edit below the W-2 information.
6. Edit your W-2 information here, then select Continue.
7. Select Continue to return to the Wages & Income screen. 
   
    

[keyboardmash]

TurboTax continued to generate the error message until I truncated the employer name to 30 characters.  I backed it off one character at a time starting with 35 until it stopped producing the error.   On the screen where the W2 info is entered TurboTax has a help link next to the employer field.  When clicked the message it produces is " How should I enter my employer's name?
Enter your employer's name and info exactly as it appears on your W-2.

The IRS will compare your employer's name with what's in their database and can reject your return if it doesn't match."

This is counter to what is needed to get Turbo Tax to accept the employer name without producing error messages.  TurboTax should change the help text to guide the user to an error free data entry experience, should auto truncate the employer name as needed to avoid the error message, and should reconcile the idea that the software is demanding a truncated version with the advice in the product that the IRS will reject your return if the field is modified to make the TurboTax software errors go away.