Married filing separately

Forum|Forum|7 years ago
June 4, 2019
1 reply
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we have been filing married filing jointly for years now. I followed the steps as I do every year, but when I got to state taxes it said because my husband was part-year resident of Georgia we MUST file married filling separately. I'm a full year resident of Georgia and because he was active duty military last year his state of residence was Florida for part of the year. I'm wondering if we have to file two federal taxes and two state taxes?

TurboTax Deluxe Online

Opus 17

Level 15

It's a messy but common situation. You have two choices.

You file a federal married separate return and a Georgia resident married separate return. Your spouse files a federal married separate return and a Georgia separate part-year resident return.

Or, you can file a federal joint return, but then each file separate Georgia returns. Because you can't prepare state only in turbotax, this will require three separate tax files. First, prepare a federal married filing joint return with no state return. This can be e-filed. Then, prepare a federal married filing separate return for yourself with separate Georgia resident return. Print out the returns, discard the federal separate return, and mail the Georgia separate return. Your spouse will prepare a federal married filing separate return with Georgia part-year separate return, discard the Federal separate federal, and mail the state separate return. The state returns can't be e-filed in this situation.

Because you will be preparing 2 or 3 different tax files, it will be more cost efficient to use turbotax installed on your own computer, purchased from a CD or download, unless you qualify for online free filing for at least 2 of the 3 returns.