How to do the New York metropolitan commuter transportation mobility tax (MCTMT or MTA tax)

[lisa986]

I'm very confused about how to enter do the NY MCTMT. I have a very simple situation: I have some self-employment income and some income from W-2 jobs. I lived in Brooklyn and did all my self-employment work from home.  I believe I should owe MTA tax on 100% of my self-employment income since the amount was over $50k. 

So what do I do in TurboTax? I went through the federal and NY State forms. I tried going through the MCTD Self-Employment Income topic, filled in some things, got confused, ...   I may need to do something special to start over, but right now, when I revisit that topic, it asks if I want to work on MCTMT. I say yes. Then it asks me to select the method I used, or want to use, to determine my net self-employment earnings in MCTD. I lived in Zone 1, so I check the top box and Continue. This brings up form IT-203-A for which the TurboTax title is "Nonresident Business Allocation Schedule".  Q1. Do I need to fill this out??  Q2. If not, should I not choose to work on MCTMT at all? Will it be calculated automatically??

If I should go ahead...

Q3. The form has my name as well as my spouse's. Is that correct??     

Q4. I put my total self-employment income on line 6, columns 1 and 2 and 100% in column 3.   Everything else further up is $0.  Now line 8 says to divide line 7 (100%)  "by 3, or by actual number of percentages if less than 3."  What does that mean?? Should I enter 33.33% or 100% ??

Q5. For 9, it says to list each item of business income from IT-203 Federal Amount column, but IT-203 is the Nonresident/Part-Year Resident form. I'm doing the Resident form IT-201! 

Q6.  Maybe I should just skip the walk-through and go directly to the MCTMT Worksheet(s) and allocate 100% to Zone 1.  If I can figure out how to fill out the rest of it.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Why is this so difficult??

[lisa986 · Accepted solution]

I figured it out! In case anyone else runs into this... 

Do NOT choose to "Allocate earnings using form IT-203A Zone 1/2". 

Instead, choose "Allocate using another method"! (The "Learn More" info is not clear.)

Doing this, you will be able to simply enter the amount of your earnings for Zone 1 and Zone 2!  It will then ask if you made any estimated payments; enter dates and amounts.

When you finish, it'll ask about the spouse. If you enter an amount under the threshold, it'll tell you there's no tax due. 

Apparently if you are part year resident or non-resident of NY, choose to use IT-203A. 

[MythSaraLee]

Which chief terms do you use in the NYS tax file?

Education credits, retirement plan credits or Energy credits? Thank you very much.