California - deducting alimony paid

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
April 11, 2024
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When going through my federal taxes, I entered alimony paid and TurboTax told me that I can't deduct it from my federal income, which was expected.

However, after going through my California state taxes, it never prompted or asked me anything about alimony, so I cannot tell if that alimony paid carried over at all, and I cannot find anywhere that even mentions alimony in the California state section.

Should I manually enter it under "Other Adjustments to Income"? And under there, should I put it as a Subtraction or an Addition? Schedule CA (540) line 19a says to enter Alimony Paid as an Addition, but that doesn't seem to make sense since it actually increased my tax liability instead of reducing it as expected.

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Best answer by tchips4567

I'll answer my own question here since I figured it out and it wasn't obvious.

I did a test by removing my Alimony Paid from my federal interview completely, and saw that my California refund went down, proving that it does apply and work. I just wish it was obvious and that TurboTax asked or confirmed about this when doing the state taxes. I also checked that it shows up in the filled out Schedule CA (540) form.