My wife is military stationed at Fort Polk. She is from CA. I work and made 97k this year. It keeps saying I owe a lot more in state. It seems to be counting her income.

[DavidS127]

Yes, if your wife's home of record is California, California will tax her military income.  You wife should not pay Louisiana taxes on her military income, but if she earned "other than military" money while in Louisiana she may need to file a Louisiana nonresident tax return.

[kramik1]

Yes, I know that. But turbo tax does not reflect that. When I enter the amount it does not deduct her income from my state tax filing. So it says I owe thousands more than I do. When it asks me for LA if I want to add any exclusions and I put military salary Turbo Tax says I already entered it in a previous screen and removes it. So It looks like there is a bug in the program.

[KrisD15]

I would guess that you might need to revisit the "My Info" interview in the Personal Section of the Federal return and make sure the correct selections were made, specifically that the residency for your wife (and you if you elected it) is California and that your wife was not in any other state if she did not earn income other than her military pay. 

[kramik1]

Yes, I verified it. I think if you are filing married, joint filing that LA wants both incomes even if you do not qualify her income later. I might file non resident LA because I read on their state gov page that was an option as well. Either there is a bug somewhere or maybe I need to reset my cookies.

[KrisD15]

I have included a link below. 

The issue may be that fact that Louisiana is a community property state, so you might need to file Married Filing Separately for LA.  

The easiest way to do this (which really isn't easy) is to e-file a joint federal return, and then create a "mock" married filing separately federal return in a TurboTax product to create the Louisiana state return. 

TurboTax Help Link