@howjltx1 wrote:
@Opus 17 wrote:
“If your employer is unwilling to stop withholding GA tax, after you move, you'll just have to file a GA nonresident return, each year, to get a refund. It's a minor (usually) hassle, but you will not end up paying GA income tax for the days you physically work in TX. “
I just returned from a weeklong business trip in Atlanta, Ga., where I did file an expense report with the company that will be reimbursed by the US government. I also have similar business trips regularly to California, usually for one to two weeks every three months. California and Georgia normally don’t tax me on this; would there be an exception to this since I was a partial resident for the first 5 ½ months of this year? One other question I have is the company is saying we may need to go to California for a few months on a business trip, is there a point California will begin charging state income tax? If so, would it be an accumulation of all income earned this year? I know working/staying overseas for more than a month throws you into a whole new tax situation, do states have this type of tax rules?
I suspect @TomD8 will be able to answer more specifically as to California.
In general, you owe taxes as a non-resident to any state where you live or work (physically) temporarily when you are away from home. Think about how many state tax returns a professional athlete must have to file. Because your company is based in Georgia, Georgia is the state that will most likely want to tax you if you even spend 1 day working in Georgia. If you worked 1 week a year, Georgia will want to see that 1/52nd of your income is declared as Georgia non-resident income and taxed in Georgia. (2, 3, 4 weeks or more, whatever, Georgia will want to tax it. Keep track of your days physically working in Georgia.)
California will be the same. There may be exceptions for de minimis work (too little to worry about). For example, I attend a work conference once a year for 3-4 days, and it's in California every other year. I stay in a hotel, and although I am technically "working", I have never thought about filing a CA tax return (maybe I should?) . I hope there is an exception for very short term things like that. However, if you are regularly working in CA 1 week every 3 months, that may pass a threshold test, and certainly if you are working in California for more than a month, California will want to tax all your income earned in California. Yes, it's cumulative, once you pass whatever threshold they have, they will want to tax all your days worked in California. I just don't know what the legal threshold is.
Never paying taxes before for working short term in California doesn't mean you weren't supposed to pay tax, it just means you might have got away with it. But as I said, I don't know if there is a threshold number of days.
I don't understand your statement that "California and Georgia normally don’t tax me on this". Do you mean your business reimbursement? If you are or were a resident of Georgia, you must be paying Georgia state income taxes on your taxable income. Reimbursements for work-related expenses are normally never taxable in any state or to the IRS if the employer uses an accountable plan--that means you provide receipts and other proof that the expenses were legitimately work related, and you are only reimbursed for your actual expenses and not over.
