Question

Part Year Residency and Earned Income

Forum|Forum|6 years ago
February 11, 2020
1 reply
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My husband and I will be filing our return as married filing jointly.

On January 1, 2019, we were both living in New Mexico. On February 3, I established a temporary residence in California to begin a job there. My husband and daughter remained in New Mexico. As it was a temporary residence, I used for all legal purposes (license, home ownership, insurance, vehicle registration and plates, credit cards, utilities, taxes, etc.) my permanent address in New Mexico. I even returned to New Mexico to "visit" for more than a week each time on several occasions.

The job did not work out and I returned to New Mexico on July 6.

In trying to fill out the forms for part-year residency, I am not given an option to just put in the short time frame I was in CA.

Given these circumstances, my husband's circumstances are straightforward. He only had earned income in NM. Do I claim part year residency in CA or just earned income?

DawnC

Employee

For tax purposes, you are a nonresident of a state if you temporarily worked there (with no intention of making it your home). Since your time in CA is considered temporary, you should file a non-resident return for CA instead of a part-year return. You are both residents of NM all year. I will leave instructions below on how to get it right in TurboTax. On your federal return, in the personal information section, you should list NM as the only place you lived, but that you earned income in another state (CA). Details are fully explained in the link below.

An explanation of how it works - Multiple States—Figuring What's Owed When You Live and Work in More Than One State

How to get it right in TurboTax - How do I file a nonresident state return?

Fortunately, in most cases your resident state allows you to take a credit for the taxes you have to pay to the other state, as in a temporary residence situation. Prepare your nonresident return first to make sure this happens!

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