Colorado Part Time Resident

[tnron]

Lived in Colorado for 7 months. Transferred to New York to live & then job was terminated after 4 months & I had to move back to Colorado in December.  Paid NY taxes for time I lived there. How do I file Part time resident in Colorado when I left for 4 months, but then returned last month of year due to job doing staff reductions? Part time form has when I lived in Colorado & then left. However, I returned for last month of the year.

[MonikaK1]

Where prompted in TurboTax, enter the dates you lived in each state. Since you were in Colorado at the end of the year, prepare that return last and prepare a part-year resident return for New York first after the Federal return. You may be able to claim a credit on the Colorado return for taxes paid to New York.

For more information on this topic, see Multiple States—Figuring What's Owed When You Live and Work in More Than One State.

[tnron]

Thank you for the advice. My problem is that the Colorado part time form only allows me to put in my original dates. There is no way I can add my return date at the end of the year. Filing NY form, I have to put in the dates I was there, but they were consecutive so no problem. My Colorado residency will be too short and inaccurate if I cannot put in the month I came back to live in CO.

[BillM223]

How about entering CO residency dates all together, that is make your initial residency from January to August instead of July, so that you end up with the right number of months on CO? I don't think this will negatively affect either CO or NY, if you put all the CO months together.

You are trying to enter numbers in CO to get the right results for CO and NY. When you do get the right numbers, declare victory. Remember that is it not wrong to fib to TurboTax in order to get the right results - you just need to document everything so that if anyone ever asks, you can explain why you did what you did.

[tnron]

You made me laugh, Bill! Unfortunately it is not Turbo Tax, but Colorado's form that is presenting the problem. I do agree that as long as all funds that belong to each state are and were paid to that state we should be good to go. I appreciate the advice and am saving all paperwork, paying appropriate taxes & hope this situation never presents itself again.