Circular errors error on Form 1065 p1-3 designated individual contact information - what to do?

[filmil]

What do I do: I am getting a circular error on Form 1065 p1-3 regarding designated individual contact information, like so:

(1) I prepare the tax content, and get ready to e-file

(2) The e-filing process says that I have errors and need to add the designated individual information.

(3) I add the designated individual information - name, address, phone etc.

(4) I get told that since the designated individual's ID is a SSN, I have to remove the information I entered at (3)

(5) I remove the information I entered at (3)

(6) I get told that I have errors and am basically back at (2)

There is *no* way to get out of this loop, except for filing paper forms.  What is going on?

[Anonymous_]

Check your forms and worksheets in Forms Mode for red exclamation marks.

[filmil]

Sure, but there is no way to fix the red exclamation marks.

[HeatherPLO]

If you are using the Download/Desktop version, you will need to make sure you have updated your software.  To manually update for Windows, please see the Help Article here.  Then, try the steps again.  If that doesn't work, please reach out to us directly using the Help Article here.  This ensures you will get to the correct department as quickly as possible.  

@filmil 

[filmil]

One tax season later, I figured out what the issue was. Posting an update here in case someone else hits this.

(The 2023 edition has the same bug still, but I now know how to work around it!)

When entering partner information, I cut and pasted the EIN of the partner. However, TurboTax pasted the EIN in the SSN format. EIN has one hyphen, SSN has two.  This tripped up the checker to think that the PR is a person, while the PR was in fact a company.

The solution is to go all the way back to entering the partnership information, and editing the "SSN" field of the company which is a designated partnership representative (PR) to be formatted as an EIN (XX-YYYYYY), not (XXX-YY-ZZZZ).