I'm attempting to e-file my state return (PA) and am getting an error message that says Hidden Fed to State: Employer Name has too many characters. What can I do?

[Anonymous_]

How do I contact TurboTax? (intuit.com)

[MarilynG1 · Accepted solution]

Your state may not have as many characters in the Employer Name Field as your Federal return does.

Go back the Employer Name field in your Federal return and shorten the name a bit.  

Only the first few characters of the Employer Name are needed to Efile, so don't worry about shortening the Employer Name affecting your Efile. 

[keyboardmash]

TurboTax:  How many characters will TurboTax accept in the W-2 Employer Name field when attempting to submit PA state taxes?  Why does TurboTax not truncate this field automatically on behalf of the user?

[JulieS]

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.