My husband worked in several states and two of them were ones that don’t have state tax so in box 15 it has the states but no state employee ID number but box 16 has how much he made in the state and then 17 is also blank. And TurboTax won’t let me move on with them blank. I know you don’t have to file a state return for them but don’t you still have to have it on your federal? This is the only thing that’s confusing me
No, it won't affect the Federal return. If box 17 is empty, leave boxes 15,16 and 17 empty.
So wouldn’t that mean not adding it because the state is apart of 15? And some posts I see they say to put the EIN in there instead and just putting 0 in box 17. That’s where I’m getting confused because there’s so many different answers. (This is my first year doing it myself)
Box 17 shows how much of your tax was sent to the state in box 15. If box 17 is empty, then no tax was sent to that state, so the entry in box 15 (and 16, if one) doesn't need to be there.
When people suggest putting the federal EIN in box 15, that's only because there is an amount in box 17, and they want to move on past the error checking.
And since the IRS does not care about what's in boxes 15-20, you don't have to worry about hurting your federal return, no matter what you do. What you are trying to do is get past the TurboTax review which is trying to make sure you don't have a typo.