We are getting that diagnostic on a few returns too.  It wasn't there yesterday and none of those returns are combined groups, never have been.  Very weird.

How do you remove form 05-166, without creating a diagnostic error. 

Delete the affiliates from the combined reporting screen, screen 49.433.

then how do you file the affiliates? 

Ours is not a combined group and never has been so there are no affiliates.  It's very strange.

okay, thank you.

Guess i have to call lacerte.  

Same for us, appears to be just S Corps for us.  I submitted a service ticket to lacerte and attached a client file.

Spent an hour on the phone with Lacerte yesterday, it's clearly on their side.  Today the diagnostic wording has changed but still a Critical e-file diagnostic that is not applicable to the return(s).

Same for us.  Sounds like a Lacerte programming error.  Texas franchise is just really messing up this year.

I had 3 TX S corps, 2 went through fine but the 3rd one had this diagnostic.  Nothing that I can see is different between the 3.  This is so frustrating.

The one that failed is a sole shareholder, no combined group, same as the other 2.

dmwBH or Jkg1, did they give any indication of when they might fix this?

We're having the same problem.  The company has no affiliates.  It never has.   We are unable to file their report because of this error message.

I used the disable efile error check and was able to get the return filed.  I don't like using that feature but since there doesn't seem to much of an effort on Lacerte's part to get this resolved and I knew they didn't have any affiliates or any tax liability I decided to use that option rather than wait until close to the due date in May and hope they fix it.

I talked to Lacerte yesterday and they said the diagnostic happens when you have an amount in the Employee Benefits field in screen 10.  It makes no sense but they are working on fixing it.  I spot checked our clients with the diagnostic and they all had amounts for Employee Benefits.  They didn't say how long before it's fixed but did mention the disable option to bypass the issue.