My daughter is living and working outside the U.S. and used my address (in NY) for a W-2 from WA. NY withheld taxes! Can we file a NY refund to get it back?

[JillS56]

If there are NY withholdings and she did not reside or work in NY then the only way to get the withholding back from NY is to file a NY return.   

[lakeshore1]

Thank you for the reply. I assumed we would have to file a NY return to get it refunded. BUT I can't figure out how to do it. I put in a WA address for her, but the W-2 shows a NY address, and NY tax withheld.

[lakeshore1]

I think I figured it out. I had to specify what % of her income was earned in NY.

[lakeshore1]

Still can't get it to work. I allocated 0% of her income to NY, and it's showing that she is due a refund of all the NY tax withheld. So far so good. BUT when I go to file, I get this message: "Allocation worksheet for PY/NR: Wages, Salaries, Etc,Col D New York wages were reported on Federal Form W-2 but no wage income has been allocated to New York. This will cause the efiled return to be rejected by New York state." So the problem is on the W-2, which has MY address (in NY) as her address (since she is out of the country and is using my mailing address). Her employer (in WA) listed the income as NY income. Is there any way to fix this???

[lakeshore1 · Accepted solution]

FYI for anyone with a similar problem - I could not get this to work, so I ended up filing her NY return by mail, which they say is not allowed. It worked - she got a refund.