I don't understand why unless they are totally clueless when the CA FTB Pub 1031 says on page 11 for Married Filing Separately. The CA tax return should have a copy of the Federal Tax return that has the Federal 8958 form for the community property income splitting and CA uses that form.
You need to talk to someone in CA that knows what they are talking about.
Separate Property
Separate property includes the following:
• Property owned separately by each spouse/
RDP before marriage or registering as a domestic
partnership.
• Property received separately as gifts or inheritances.
• Property purchased with separate property funds.
• Money earned while domiciled in a separate property
state.
• All property declared separate property in a valid
agreement.
Maintain separate property separately. If the property
or the income from the property is used for community
purposes, or commingled, it could lose its separate
property character, overriding any agreements
While it does not specifically say to split "CA tax withheld", it only stands to reason that if CA income must be split then tax withheld on that income must also be split otherwise the spouse with no actual CA income would be under withheld and the spouse with the CA income would be over withheld - and that would lead to a illogical result.
**Disclaimer: This post is for discussion purposes only and is NOT tax advice. The author takes no responsibility for the accuracy of any information in this post.**
