I am living and working in New York with H-1B visa since May 2021. My husband is living and continuing his PhD in Maryland with an F-1 visa since the same date. We only have wage income (W-2s). I have two questions about how to file taxes and prepare the forms in TurboTax.
First, I want to make sure that we can file the federal taxes jointly. As I understand, since I have been present in the US for more than 183 days in 2021, I can be considered a resident alien for tax purposes and we can file our federal taxes jointly following the rules in IRS's Publication 519 (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p519.pdf). We just need to file our federal tax return by mail and include a statement that we choose my spouse, who is a nonresident, to be treated as a resident for tax purposes. Is there any problem with that?
For the state returns, I want to make sure we can file separately and if we can, how to do it using Turbotax.
The instructions for Maryland tax returns indicate that a resident must use the same filing status used in the federal tax return. But it also says we can choose to file separately or jointly (https://www.marylandtaxes.gov/forms/21_forms/Resident_Booklet.pdf - See the instruction 8). Similarly, New York state tax instructions say that spouses can file joint federal returns but separate New York state returns if one spouse is a New York resident but the other one is not (https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/file/filing_status.htm). If my information is correct, how can I use Turbotax to file joint federal returns and separate state returns for me for New York and for my spouse for Maryland?
Thank you in advance for your help.
