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tmbasford · Apr 15, 2012, 07:50 AM

Hi,
We are trying to figure out our taxes and have (what we think, anyway) a complicated situation. Here are the basic facts:

1. We were married in Sept. 2011

2. I have lived and worked in MA for all of 2011

3. My husband and his kids moved from NY to MA in Sept. 2011, so he has lived and worked in both states in 2011

All my income is from Mass, his is from Mass and NY. We were going to file federal jointly, until we saw that NYS would be taxing us on *all* of our joint income and we would owe them a substantial amount of $$. I tried playing with the allocations in turbotax, but the only way to decrease the amount owed was to allocate only a percentage of his NYS income as NYS earnings (?).

We are really not clear on what 'allocations' is doing, and I was basically just putting numbers into the percentage to see how the amount owed would change. 100% allocation, no allocation, and changing #days for allocation didn't change amount owed, only % allocation.

Turbotax is less than helpful for this, and provides no explanation of allocation. I would greatly appreciate any advice on how we should file and/or information re: allocation for nys taxes.
Thanks!!

AtlantaTaxExpert · Apr 15, 2012, 10:08 PM

If you are filing as part-year residents of each state, you should only be taxed on income earned within each respective state.

Now, the tax RATE is driven by your overall income level.

Short of actually manipulating the numbers, there is no there advice I can offer.

If you want to email me the numbers, I can do some modeling. Look up my email address at my profile.