@stoonie08
Tax withholding is handled by your employer’s HR or payroll department.
In TurboTax, if you were starting from scratch, and you enter that your main address is Texas, then as part of your personal information section, TurboTax will ask “did you work or make money in any other state?“ In this case, you will answer “yes“ so that you will trigger TurboTax to add a California package to your tax return. TurboTax should then ask you if you lived in California, if you moved into or out of California, or if you were never a resident of California.
When you indicate that you were never a resident of California, TurboTax should start a California non-resident tax return. Most taxpayers would also have a resident return for their home state, but Texas does not have income tax so this does not apply to you.
When you have completed your federal tax information, you will go to the California state interview. TurboTax should list out each type of income that you reported on your federal tax return and ask you if it was California income. For example, if you sold property in the state of California and had a capital gain, that would be California income even though you never lived in California. Or, if you worked 200 days of the year but 10 days you worked in California because your employer required you to be in California for training, then 5% of your job income would be California income. Since the retirement account distribution was paid to you while you lived in Texas, it is not California income and you would indicate that the 0% or zero dollars of that income was California income.
You can delete your state return and start over, although I’m not sure where the command for that function is located.
If you were not previously asked to allocate your state income, then my guess is that you accidentally told TurboTax you were a full year resident of the state of California.
