Hi, I have faced a challenge in terms of state tax filing and hope you can help me.
My wife and I got married last year. She has lived and worked in New York until October, she then quit job and moved to California. I have been living and working in California for the whole year. In this situation, how should we file taxes?
For New York, must we file separately? My wife has to file resident, and I have to file non-resident? Or can we file MFJ? We would prefer MFJ.
For California, given my wife has no income in California, can we just file MFJ as resident?
However, in TurboTax software, when we started state tax, it prompted us to file nonresident for New York and resident for California. Do I need to change them?
You don't need to change the returns. Since you were married before the end of the year, and your spouse has lived in California since the latter part of the year, you can file a joint Nonresident return for New York and joint Resident return for California.
New York has one form, Form IT-203, Nonresident and Part-Year Resident Income Tax Return, that covers taxpayers who were nonresidents either part or all of the year. See this New York webpage for more information.