Military Spouse - Rejected Return

[kwilkk]

My Federal and Nonresident State (CA) taxes were accepted but my full-term year resident State taxes (AL) have been rejected 8 times. I am getting an error that "Total Alabama Wages, Form 40 Pg. 1, line 5, must equal the total amount of all State Wages (including Wages Earned Out of State) as reported in Box 16 of the NEW ELF 2010 (4) STATE WAGE AND LOCALITY Federal 1040 W-2 (State Wages 1, State Wages 2, State Wages 3 and State Wages 4). Note: plus/minus +/- $3.00 variance allowance has been added to TotalWagesSalariesTips to allow for rounding errors."

I have tried everything under the sun to fix them. How do I go about this?

[Anonymous_]

You might have to contact Support:

What is the TurboTax phone number? (intuit.com)

I'll page Champ @pk because I believe PK is familiar with Alabama (or used to be).

[pk]

@kwilkk ,  assuming that your home state is AL and because AL does not have a  reciprocity agreement with CA etc.,  your AL incomer must world income i.e. including those income allocated to other states. -- should be the same as your federal  W-2 Box 1.  But you have to prepare the non-resident state  income,  return first -- this way you know what the tax liability  for that state.  You AL ( home state ) is the last one you do and TubroTax should  guide you how to claim tax credit for taxes paid to the other state(s).   This obviously generic answer.

I am pretty sure  my colleague @Hal_al is the expert  for Alabama and should be able to help in nitty-gritty of the situation.

@Hal_al  please could you help

[TomD8]

@pk 's answer is basically correct.  It works like this:

CA can tax you as a non-resident only on "CA-source" income; for example, earnings from work performed within CA.

Your resident state of AL can tax ALL your income, including any earnings from California.

Therefore you must file both a non-resident CA tax return reporting your CA-source income, AND your home state AL tax return, reporting ALL your income.

You will be able to claim a credit on your AL return for the taxes paid to CA on the dollars taxed by both states.  The credit prevents double taxation, which is prohibited by federal law.

Using TurboTax, prepare the non-resident state return before you do the home state return.  This will result in the TT program calculating and applying the credit for you.