diff --git a/builtin/providers/test/resource.go b/builtin/providers/test/resource.go
index 79c5b4a45..c8556a2b7 100644
--- a/builtin/providers/test/resource.go
+++ b/builtin/providers/test/resource.go
@@ -163,6 +163,15 @@ func testResourceRead(d *schema.ResourceData, meta interface{}) error {
 	d.Set("computed_map", map[string]string{"key1": "value1"})
 	d.Set("computed_list", []string{"listval1", "listval2"})
 	d.Set("computed_set", []string{"setval1", "setval2"})
+
+	// if there is no "set" value, erroneously set it to an empty set. This
+	// might change a null value to an empty set, but we should be able to
+	// ignore that.
+	s := d.Get("set")
+	if s == nil || s.(*schema.Set).Len() == 0 {
+		d.Set("set", []interface{}{})
+	}
+
 	return nil
 }
 
diff --git a/helper/plugin/grpc_provider.go b/helper/plugin/grpc_provider.go
index fc2bfea2f..6cdaaa1d9 100644
--- a/helper/plugin/grpc_provider.go
+++ b/helper/plugin/grpc_provider.go
@@ -448,6 +448,7 @@ func (s *GRPCProviderServer) ReadResource(_ context.Context, req *proto.ReadReso
 		return resp, nil
 	}
 
+	newStateVal = normalizeNullValues(newStateVal, stateVal, false)
 	newStateVal = copyTimeoutValues(newStateVal, stateVal)
 
 	newStateMP, err := msgpack.Marshal(newStateVal, block.ImpliedType())