Hi Kristine, I would be interested to hear your (and others) opinion on my situation as it seems very similar to others in this thread.
I work for a New York based company. In August 2020 we opened a small office in West Palm beach and one of our employees moved there. I was offered the opportunity to move to Florida also as an increasing number of our clients have moved to the region and it makes sense to have a base here to serve them. I deceived to move our family to Florida and we decided to leave CT July 1st 2021, the day after our home rental lease expired .
During March 2021, the employee we had in Florida resigned from the company and so we did not renew the lease on the office space after April as it was decided we would look for an office space in Miami and I would just work from home until then.
Full disclosure, I’m a stock broker performing core duties, I buy/sell shares on a daily basis and solicit business from clients based all over the globe.
So, my 2021 tax filing. My company stopped withholding NY state tax from my pay check in August (month late but that’s a different story.)
We filed already and my accountant prepared the usual NY state and CT filings as we always have.
I have now received the standard inquiry from NY state tax authority regarding the time worked etc to see if I actually owe more than I have paid and mentioning telecommuting rules.
Now, this has brought to light that my accountant didn’t know I was working from home in Florida, as I never thought to mention that to him, and he has said that NY may have an issue for obvious telecommuting issues. He was expecting it to just be a standard split year filing.
From reading this thread however, I’m now questioning whether I have filed incorrectly in the first place as I worked from home in CT from Jan 1st 2021 until June 30th 2021.
We moved office in November 2020 and I have not even been to our new office nor do I have a desk assigned to me there. I’m pretty certain I didn’t set foot in NY state all of 2021, and if I did, it was most definitely personal reasons such as a visiting Costco on the NY/CT border or driving through the state the day I left CT to drive to Florida.
I guess I have a few questions here, did I file incorrectly? Should I refile ? Or should I just reply to the inquiry and see what they come back with ?
My company will provide a letter stating that I was relocated to Florida to service a growing client base, that I perform core services from my home office (continuing to trade and solicit business globally ). They will also state that I have not performed any services in NY state during 2021, and that I do not have a desk assigned to me in the NY office, in your opinion, would that be good to add to the the letter ?
Should they also add that my home office in Florida is my primary office ?
I’m less concerned about the 2021 rebate than I am cleaning this up for 2022 and going forward as my accountant said I could be liable for NY state tax still until such time we have a permanent office in Florida.
Appreciate there’s a lot to unpack there but I wanted to give as much color as possible.
thanks all
