How to use TurboTax Premier for married filing separately step by step?

[joco_chan]

I was living to work in Texas while my wife did in New York during 2021. We would like to file tax separately with TurboTax Premier for federal and New York state return. Firstly, I prepared tax with married joint married filing jointly status using my Texas information as mailling address. Then I switched to married filing separately staus and whole tax return turned to a mess. 

My question is how to use TurboTax Premier prepare federal tax for both of us and New York state return for my wife. Should I input whole of our income together or sequence our information in two separated tax filings? Thank you!

[ThomasM125]

You need to prepare two separate tax returns. The federal can be married-joint. Then, prepare an entirely separate return for New York for your spouse, filing as married separate. You can e-file the federal return but will have to mail in the New York return, as you can't e-file it if you don't e-file the federal return it was created from.

You are allowed to mail your New York return in since your spouse is a non-resident.

You could purchase the TurboTax desktop product that will allow you to prepare two returns for the same price. If you do that, you can transfer your online tax file to your computer so you don't need to re-enter everything.

You can do this by using the Tax Tools menu option on your left menu bar in TurboTax, then Tools, then Save your return to your computer.

Here is a link to allow you to purchase the desktop TurboTax product:

TurboTax Download Products

[VolvoGirl]

Are you using the Online Premier or the Desktop CD/Download Premier program?  Do you want to file federal as Joint and state as separate?  Or just file 2 separate returns for both federal and state?

FILE FEDERAL JOINT and STATE SEPARATE

You need to do 3 separate federal returns. One for Joint and 1 for each spouse to do the mock separate federal return to do the separate state returns.

If you are using the online version it will be cheaper and easier to do it in the desktop version. Contact Customer Service to give you the desktop program download.

Reading the FAQ it looks like you have to use 3 accounts. One to file the Joint return. Then you each need another account to fill out fake federal MFS returns to do your separate state returns. So you will have to PAY for 3 online accounts (3 federal returns and 2 state returns). That's why it's cheaper to use the Desktop installed program. If you don't have a computer to install the desktop program on maybe it would be cheaper and easier to go to a local accountant or tax place.

See this article on how to file a joint federal return and file separate state returns…..
https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/using-turbotax/help/how-do-i-prepare-a-joint-federal-return-and-se...