No, whoever you spoke to was confused.
First, the general rule is that you owe state income tax on all your worldwide income to the state where you have your permanent residence, or domicile. If you work out of state for part of the year, you would owe a non-resident state income tax return for that state that only reported income earned in that state, and then you would prepare a tax return for your home state that reports all your income, and your home state will give you a credit for the taxes you paid out of state.
If you moved during the year and changed domiciles, you would file a part-year resident return for each state, and would allocate your income to each state based on where you were domiciled when the income was paid.
So to answer your question about 2020, we would first need to know whether you were always domiciled in Texas and temporarily worked in New York, or whether you were domiciled in New York and then moved to Texas.
Then separately, New York is one of six states that applies a “convenience of the employer“ rule for taxing income when you work for a New York State employer. If you are working remotely for a New York State employer, and the reason you are working remotely is for the employer‘s convenience, then New York does not tax your income and you only pay tax in your home state. If you are working remotely for your own convenience, the New York will tax all your income from that New York-based employer. For example, if you are a repair technician for an equipment company and your territory is Texas, then you are working from Texas for your employer‘s convenience. If you are a graphic designer and could work from anywhere, and New York has an office space that you could use but you choose to work from home in Texas, then you are working out of state for your own convenience.
So depending on your circumstances, you might owe a non-resident return to New York that reports all your New York income, or you might only owe a non-resident New York return that reports income earned on for the days that you were living in New York.
A third factor is New York City tax, which you only owe on income earned while you are living or working in New York City, even if you are being taxed by the state on all your income due to the convenience of the employer rule.
For 2020, we might be able to recommend a way to amend your return depending on the circumstances if we knew them in more detail.
For 2022 and the future, you need to look at “convenience of the employer” states and other states separately.
If you take a contract with a client that is not based in a convenience of the employer state, you would only owe state income tax on earnings that were paid while you were living and working in that state, even if it is temporary. If you do all your work from Texas, then you would owe no state income tax on those contracts.
If you take a contract from a client in a convenience of the employer state, you next have to determine whether the client has an office space that they offer to you or whether they prefer you to work from home. If they offer you an office space and you work from home by preference, you will owe state income tax in that state, but if they do not offer you a workspace in that state, then you are working at home for their convenience and you would not owe state income tax.
Note that this really only applies to work that can be done from home. If you are an oil rigger or a carpenter and you worked on site, then you will always owe state income tax to the state in which you are working for the wages paid to you in that state.
Convenience of the employer states are Connecticut, New York, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Delaware and Nebraska.
