Kindly provide a few more details:

• Where are you living now that you are back in the US?
• Have you purchased a home in another state since returning to the US?
• Do you have a CA driver's license?
• Do you have a car registered in CA?
• Are you registered to vote in CA?
• Do you have a bank account in CA?
• How many days did you spend in CA in 2019?

From the information you provided, your partner will be a US resident in 2019 and you can file married filing jointly.

Thanks @KarenJ2! Here are my responses to your questions:

• Where are you living now that you are back in the US? California. But he is here on a tourist visa.
• Have you purchased a home in another state since returning to the US? No.
• Do you have a CA driver's license? I do. His California license expired when we left the US in April last year, and he has not gotten one since.
• Do you have a car registered in CA? No.
• Are you registered to vote in CA? I am. He is not a US citizen.
• Do you have a bank account in CA? Yes.
• How many days did you spend in CA in 2019?  50 days each. But we were traveling the entire time, not living and working in one place. He was on a tourist visa that entire time.

You will both be CA residents due to the domicile rule in California.  You can have only one domicile at a time. Once you acquire a domicile, you retain that domicile until you acquire another. A change of domicile requires all of the following: • Abandonment of your prior domicile. • Physically moving to and residing in the new locality. • Intent to remain in the new locality permanently or indefinitely as demonstrated by your actions.

As you have not moved to a new locality where you intend to remain permanently,  you remain a resident of CA.

A CA resident is any individual who meets any of the following:

• Present in California for other than a temporary or transitory purpose 

• Domiciled in California, but outside California for a temporary or transitory purpose

2018 CA Guidelines for Determining Resident Status

Is that true even though he is a Canadian citizen? At no time in 2019 was he anything other than a tourist in California - and he's again here as just a tourist. He didn't have any home in California at any time in 2019, and as of December 31 2019 we were not certain whether we would like to come back to California permanently or not. While in 2018 he was clearly a California resident, in 2019 there was really nothing tying him to the state. If anything, if he had to go somewhere in an emergency it would be to his parents' house in Canada.

Hi @KarenJ2 - I should add that we both had German work visas lasting 3 years, and so Germany considers us to have been residents there. But I don't know that California would recognize that.

If you moved to Germany and established a residency there, then you would have abandoned your California residency I would assume. Since your spouse is a Canadian and also a resident of Germany, he too would have a reasonable argument that he abandoned his California residentcy.

As are rule, your state of resident is the state you intend to return to if you are away temporarily. So, a lot would hinge on your intentions and physical location.

Hi @ThomasM125 ,

To clarify, neither one of us is still a resident of Germany. We are both back in California, though he is here as a tourist. We were intending to at least temporarily to return to California as of Dec 31, 2019 - but we weren't sure at that time that we would stay. I don't think I can claim that I am not a California resident. But can I be a resident and have him not be a resident for the entire year? If so, how would that work? How would we file our state taxes? We are married and filing jointly at the federal level. So how could we file jointly at the state level but not include my husband as a state resident?

Thanks!

Yes, it sounds like you are a resident.

If you file married-joint in California there is no way to split the resident state between spouses. You can file married-separate however, but you would need to prepare three federal returns in TurboTax to accomplish this, one for joint and one each for the separate state filings. You would then just file the joint return for the federal taxes and the two returns for California.

Got it, thanks @ThomasM125! But do you think he is a resident of California? If he is, then we don't need to deal with 3 separate federal returns. If he is not, then maybe it's worth filing separate returns for California - provided that savings from filing separately in California are significant enough to bother.

It seems he is not!

Thanks @ThomasM125 . For my separate state filings, you're saying I need to create two separate federal returns, not one federal return that's married filing separately? In that case, do I fill out each federal return as married filing separately, and simply exclude separate property? Or do I file them as Single?