[hakkisaydam]

I filled my Georgia State Tax Return for 2008 but did not hear from them so far although I put my new address on the form. In the instructions manual they were asking to choose the same status as in my federal return. In my federal return, I chose married filing as jointly but my wife did not have any tax number and therefore she filled a W-7 form and obtained an ITIN number. However in my state tax return, I left the section that asks my wife's SSN empty and wrote a short letter telling them that my wife applied for an ITIN number. My question is should I have filed my state tax return as single instead of married filing as jointly as my wife didn't have any SSN or ITIN at that time? How can I learn the status of my state tax return? Can I do any corrections later?

[AtlantaTaxExpert]

Like many states, Georgia has a HUGE backlog of tax returns to process, because they cut back on personnel to do the processing due to budget cuts.

That said, your return is going to be rejected in any event, because the Goergia DoR will NOT process a return without a SSN or ITIN for your wife. Your filed correctly when you filed jointly with your wife, but you should have waited until she got the ITIN back from the IRS, THEN mailed the return.

If you have the ITIN now, you can contact me at [email protected] and I can, for a small fee, complete your return with the ITIN and file it electronically, which will resolve the problem of the long wait most GA return filers are experiencing.