topic Married couple with split domicile in State tax filing

Married couple with split domicile

markgca — Sun, 17 May 2020 19:25:11 GMT

We moved to florida and with one exception cut all ties with California. The exception; Spouse works for a california company that expects her to be domiciled in california. we accept that.

so how do i file a return with turbo tax that puts ALL my income as non resident, and all spouses income as resident? i tried using the radio buttons etc but it doesnt seem to allocate it correctly; perhaps i need to do some manual adjusting? or is too complicated for turbotax?

specifics; the federal worksheets ask for state of 'residence' which is florida for both of us,

the 540NR form asks for residence and domicile state ; so for residence we selected part year resident (first year) and then for domicile, fl for me, ca for her. but it doenst seem to change anything in the numbers. do we have to do this manually? i thought it would at least move her w2 income to california with these selections, but it doesnt seem to. even if i change the options and put her as full time ca resident, nothing seems to change.

thanks for any guidance

Re: Married couple with split domicile

TomD8 — Mon, 18 May 2020 15:04:52 GMT

If both you and your wife made a permanent move to Florida in 2019, and you no longer have your home in California, then for tax purposes you are both now domiciled in Florida, and you are each a part-year resident of CA for 2019.

Your domicile is your main, primary home. You can have only one domicile at a time.

Re: Married couple with split domicile

markgca — Wed, 20 May 2020 13:31:32 GMT

thanks

but the premise is that she IS domiciled in california (complicated but the way it is)

so i want to know how turbotax can handle that

Re: Married couple with split domicile

TomD8 — Wed, 20 May 2020 14:26:52 GMT

If she was actually domiciled in CA all of 2019 (her main home was actually in CA all year), then for state tax purposes she would be a full-year resident of CA.

If she abandoned her home in CA in 2019 and relocated to a new main home in FL, then her domicile state would have changed to FL after the move, and she would be a part-year resident of CA. See "Meaning of Domicile" on page 10 of this California tax publication: https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2019/2019-1031-publication.pdf

Another way to look at it is that a taxpayer cannot claim to be domiciled in a state in which they have no home. Otherwise anyone could claim to be domiciled in a no-income-tax state like Texas.

The only exception would be active duty military, whose state of domicile for tax purposes does not change when they relocate to a different state due to military orders.

State of domicile is determined by tax law, not by employer requirements.