If I live in MA and my wife lives in NJ and she does not earn income, should we still file federal as married joint and state as married filing separately or both joint?

[alexander_paster]

My company relocated me from NJ to MA during 2018.  I lived half of the year in NJ and half in MA.  My wife stayed in NJ since my son is finishing high school.  I work but my wife does not.  

[DanielV01 · Accepted solution]

You may file as Married Filing Joint for your Federal Return even though you file as Married Filing Separately on your state return.  For New Jersey, you will file a part-year return as Married Filing Joint.  New Jersey requires you to use the same status in New Jersey as you use on the Federal Return.  You can claim part-year resident because your wife did not work last year.  

From a technical standpoint, Massachusetts has a different requirement.  If you and your spouse have different residency periods in Massachusetts, you are technically supposed to file using the status of Married Filing Separately, so I would recommend using this status for your part-year Massachusetts filing.  It will eliminate Massachusetts from asking unnecessary questions on your wife's residency if you were to file jointly.  Since your wife does not have to file her own separate Massachusetts return, you should be able to prepare both of these returns in your one TurboTax account without creating a separate mock account for her state return.