Unemployment Insurance TAX Question for GA residents collecting UI from NJ

[legend88ls1]

My wife collected UI from NJ in 2017. We were residents in GA all year. Her and her former employer already paid UI tax to NJ in 2016 which qualified her to collect into 2017. NJ is one of few states that require employees to pay into UI taxes each paycheck and I dont think GA recognizes that. Apparently I needed to claim all UI income on our 2017 GA500 return and I don't think this is right (it increases my tax liability by $500!) since taxes were already paid (albeit for the prior year) for benefits into 2017. Is there anything I can do?

[ToddL · Accepted solution]

You won't be able to get around paying GA tax on your NJ unemployment benefits. GA fully taxes unemployment compensation paid to GA residents, no matter where they "earned" it.

Retirement income and unemployment benefits are taxed by your state of residence at the time you receive those payments, not by the state where you "earned" the right to those payments.

While working in NJ, you and your employer had to pay UI premiums; in consideration for making its working residents pay into the NJ UI program, NJ exempts all unemployment benefits from state tax. 

This isn't necessarily fair, especially since new residents of NJ (e.g from GA) can draw unemployment from their old state and still get the same exemption from  NJ state tax