Hi,
I'm originally from CA and moved to WA 8 months ago and work in WA. I want to register to vote for the election however I don't currently have a WA drivers license( not able to get appoint because of Covid). If I register to vote in CA for the 2020 election. ( which means I'm saying I'm a resident of CA) Will I have to pay income taxes for CA?
My employer is an CA employer but has a registered Business in WA( meaning I dont pay income taxes). My paycheck says employer in CA though.
If you changed your domicile (your permanent home) from CA to WA this year, then for 2020 you have to file a part-year resident CA tax return. Your income would be taxable by CA until the day you began living in your new domicile in WA. (You became a resident of WA - and a non-resident of CA - on the day you began living in your new domicile in WA).
Once you became a WA resident, only your earnings from work actually (physically) performed inside CA would be taxable by CA. Earnings from work done remotely from a WA location would not be taxable by CA. (There is an exception if you are paid as an independent contractor rather than a W-2 employee.)
Your state tax obligations are NOT determined by your voter registration. They are determined by your state of domicile and (with a few exceptions*) by the location where you actually work.
*A handful of states tax non-resident remote workers, but CA is not one of them as long as you are a W-2 employee.
@TomD8 Thanks for clarifying the CA tax issues for this question. I think the OP has voter registration issues unnecessarily tangled up with state tax requirements. Based on the WA voter registration form, a WA driver's license is not required to vote in WA. The user can register to vote in the state he now lives in and pay CA for the short time that he/she lived in CA in 2020 when it's time to prepare a 2020 return.
https://www.sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/vrf_print_2020_english.pdf