I know that I need to pay CA tax as nonresident in this case but I am not clear about how much income is considered as CA taxable. Here is my tax situation. I got a CA-based job last year, but I am still living in WA right now. I commuted to CA every several days/weeks for work and worked at home or in the WA office. I am wondering how I should calculate my CA state tax? Do I have to use the numbers in my W2 or should I calculate the portion of days that I worked in CA over the total working days last year? What about the sign-on bonus? Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Under the circumstances you described, you would file a California state return and pay California income tax on all of your California-sourced income, based on your W-2 and other tax information forms, but not your Washington income; you won't need to make a calculation.
After making all of the entries needed to complete your Federal return, add a California state return in TurboTax and complete the California interview. TurboTax will include only the California income on your California return.
As a nonresident of California, all of your California-sourced income is taxable. If you lived in a state that has a state income tax, you would normally be taxed on all of your income by your resident state and you would receive a credit on your resident return for taxes paid to California. Since you live in a state (WA) that doesn't have an income tax, you would just file a California return and report California income.
See this California Franchise Tax Board webpage for more information.
A nonresident is a person who is not a resident of California.
Generally, nonresidents are:
As a nonresident, you pay tax on your taxable income from California sources.
Sourced income includes, but is not limited to:
@10and1 --
You may want to read "Income Taxable by California" on pages 6-7 of this CA tax publication:
Thanks for your help, MonikaK1! My question is I am not very clear whether the paycheck from the CA job that I got while I stayed in WA is also considered as CA Sourced income. Seems that you suggested that all of this income is CA-source no matter where you live.
Thanks for your help @TomD8 . Example 1 on Page 6 is the same as my case. I am wondering, in this case, should I consider that all of the income is CA taxable or do I need to do some calculation? Let's say I have 40K income last year and I stayed in CA half of year for work. In this case, should I consider 40K as my CA income or 20K as my CA income?