My wife and I "temporarily" moved to Missouri at the beginning of the pandemic to work remotely once my Washington based employer closed worksites and we all started working from home. We kept paying rent in WA and kept our residency there in anticipation of moving back in the spring or summer of 2020. With worksite reopening continuously getting pushed back, we continued to work from Missouri through the summer. When our lease ended in the fall and offices in WA were nowhere near reopening, we decided not to renew our lease and formally updated our addresses/withholdings with our employers. Both our employers have been withholding MO state income taxes since.
All in, we ended up living in Missouri from around March 2020 through December of 2020. Do we get to call ourselves Washington residents for the portion of the year where we were still paying rent in WA and potentially avoid MO state income tax or does it only matter where you physically were regardless of where you might be paying rent and sending your bills?
Should we file a part year resident state return with Missouri and pay state income tax for the period we were "temporarily" in MO before formalizing our move and updating state withholdings with our employers? Or should we file a non-resident return?
I have a decent grasp of the resident vs non-resident tax implications but am having a harder time determining our residency since this was and still is a temporary relocation and we continued to pay rent in Washington for most of 2020.
