[Taxpayer07]

Hi,
I am an employee of DE state company and I work in NY. I have been working in NY from Sep 25th'07. Can you help me to decide if I need to file for NY state also? I am under the impression that I have to file just for DE as my W-2 is run from DE state. Curretnly I am under "OPT" from the date I started the job. I was browsing some forums lately and found that one should file tax for state from which you received your income.. but in another forum I happened to notice that even if you stay in a state(NY) just for Job purpose, you need to file for that state(NY) too irrespective of filing for the state(DE) you received your W-2... Any adivise/suggestions
Q-2 : I bought a car( seconds) around DEC-26th, does the taxes paid for the car can be claimed? I paid the taxes as per NY sales tax as I bought it from dealer based in NY and even got the car registered in NY... Thanks in advance

[ebaines]

If you work in NY, you owe NY tax. Since you don't work in DE, you do not owe them any tax at all. Now it seems that your company has been mistakenly withholding taxes for DE rather than NY on your behalf. So you will have to file a NY State part-year resident tax form (IT-203) to determine how much tax you owe NY. You will also have to file a DE non-resident tax form so that you can get a refund of the money your payroll department has been paying them from your paycheck. It doesn't matter tat the company is headquartered in DE - you worked and lived in NY, so that's where you owe taxes. Talk to your payroll departmet and get this cleared up so you don't have the same problem in 2008.

As for deducting sales tax you paid on the car on your federal tax return - you can do that on schedule A if you itemize, but then you will not be able to deduct NY state income tax paid - you are allowed to deduct either state and local income tax OR sales tax, but not both. However, depending on your circumstance you may find that taking the standard deduction is more advantageous than itemizing.