I am active duty military and have my permanent residence in NH. My wife is a civilian federal employee, and we have chosen to file jointly for the past few years. We lived in MA for the first 180 days of 2019 and then moved to MD for the remainder of the year. Normally when filing taxes, I complete our federal return jointly using the desktop software and then download a state return to complete her state taxes separately so that my income does not get combined into hers. This method has worked well for MA.
So now, she has been working for the same federal institution located in MA the whole year but went to full-time telework after we arrived in MD on July 1st, 2019. When we received her W-2, it turns out that her employer never switched her state of residence and continued allowing her income to be taxed by MA for the whole year.
In other words, MA has received 100% of her state taxes for 2019 and MD has received 0% of her state taxes despite the fact that she physically lived in MD for a little more than half the year.
My question is how do we handle this situation? Can we essentially pay MD taxes for 185 days and then get a refund from MA? If so, how do we indicate to MA that we overpaid in taxes?
I greatly appreciate any insight, thank you!
-Carl
