Hi All,
As the title suggests, I'm a Florida Resident, now stationed in NY. In the 4 years my wife and I spent in FL, my wife changed her residency to FL, (ironically enough from NY) but never changed/updated her NY drivers license. I know a drivers license isn't an indication of residency, but every year that we lived in FL, I claimed her as a FL resident. We bought two houses (both in her name as well) in that time, and 3 different vehicles all obviously in FL, with the vehicles being registered in FL.
When I got orders to NY in 2017, I continued to claim us both as FL residents, as is my right within the SCRA and her right within the MSRRA. For 3 years; every year when I filed our taxes, I filed a married filing joint state return in NY as non-residents and they gave her back everything she paid in state income taxes. In this time-frame she renewed her NY drivers license.
Then the hiccup happened. My wife had a friend tell her to apply for New York State: Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. She happened to be pregnant in 2019, and her pregnancy was considered high-risk and with Covid-19 on the horizon, her doctor told her to not go back to work. So she obviously qualified for it. Problem is she did not tell me she applied. I just happened to wake up one morning to $35,000 in my checking account. From that year on, I've claimed her as a NY resident. I don't even want to think about the red flags that would cause if I attempted to continue claiming her as a FL resident after NY just gave her that amount of money.
My question is, at what point (if ever) can I begin claiming her as a FL resident again. I renewed my FL drivers license this past year, and both our vehicles are still registered in Florida. Did she immediately lose her MSRRA rights when I correctly allowed NY to start claiming her income? This whole situation is confusing to me.
When I file our Federal return Married Filing Jointly, NY's State Taxes tries to include my income as well on the NY State Tax filing. As you can imagine, being a FL resident with no state income taxes, NY looking at my income immediately put their hand out to collect all the taxes I didn't pay to them throughout the year. If I correctly deduct my income from the collective amount from my wife and I (as I've done for the last 3 years), they still want her to pay (albeit much less). I apologize if I'm asking more of a MSRRA question, but I've been sitting here for weeks with our taxes complete, and don't want to click submit on the state return.
