Filing state under different status than federal and allocating dependents

[jman3]

My wife and I are filing our federal return as married filing jointly. I also received some income in CT where we are nonresidents, and CT allows the state filing to be different than federal. So my plan is to make a 'mock' federal return as married filing separately and use that as a basis to populate my CT state return under married filing separately, and mail in the CT return - it seems to lower my CT taxes this way, and my wife would not file a CT return.

When I fill out the 'mock' federal return, can I say that I will be the one claiming our children as dependents? It asks, as married filing separately, which spouse is going to claim the dependents. For our real federal return filing as joint this does not apply, but for the 'mock' federal one in this case, can I claim the dependents for myself so that it will transfer that over to the CT nonresident return? I was not sure if it has any impact on the CT return anyway, but wanted to check if it is acceptable for me to add the dependents in my 'mock' federal return? Thanks!

[MaryK4 · Accepted solution]

Yes, because only one spouse has nonresident Connecticut income, you can prepare the mock federal with the dependents.  It would only be an issue if you were both filing a CT return and both claiming the children.   

[jman3]

Thank you for your prompt reply!

That makes sense that it would be okay to do as long as the number of dependents are not be double counted if my wife and I were to submit separate returns to the same government (federal or any state). Thanks again!