These are meals for onsite workers, and I believe all income and deductions should be for Rental Real Estate income.

I agree that there is no real solution with this software as of yet.

I submitted an email to support and they responded with " At this time in order to reduce the CA 8825 so that only 50% of the meals is to use the State Amounts section on Screen 17.  This will not change the amount of meals reported as Other expenses, but will change whichever amount is entered in the State Amounts section on the CA 8825." And closed the ticket, which was not very helpful. 

They want me to make an adjustment to some other unrelated expense so that taxable income is ok, but by making these adjustments, my other deductions will be off, and if ever audited, how am I to explain this? 

For LLC Tax, which is nondeductible for California purposes but is deductible for Federal purposes, I can adjust the Taxes under the State Amounts on screen 17, and add a corresponding M-1 adjustment to California only. Cannot do the same for meals expenses unfortunately. 

Is there anyway to escalate this up to someone who can make a change to the software so that I can properly record the deductions for both Fed and Cal?