Different filing status between federal and state

aspir

Hello,

I qualify for the HoH filing status federally, but not for my state (CA has stricter requirements than federal). How can I get the product to submit a filing status of Single only on the state return?

kiarab

Hello,

These are the requirements to claim the HoH status for CA.

• You were unmarried, considered unmarried, or not in a registered domestic partnership
• You have a qualifying child or relative
• Your qualifying person lived with you for more than 183 days in the year
• You paid more than ½ the costs for maintaining a home
• You were a U.S. citizen or legal resident for the whole year

And this is the requirements for HOH status for your federal return:

• You are unmarried or considered unmarried on the last day of the year.
• You paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for the year.
• A qualifying person lived with you in the home for more than half the year (except for temporary absences, such as school). However, if the qualifying person is your dependent parent, your dependent parent doesn't have to live with you.

For the most part, they are very similar and CA does say that generally, you should use the same status as your federal return.

But, if you are sure that you cannot claim the Head of Household status for your state, you will need to create two accounts. Generally, our software cannot change filing status between your federal and state returns.

First account: you can e-file your federal return but you will not want to file your state return from this account.

Second account: you will want to select single filing status and fill out the federal portion as the state return pulls information from it. When you file, you will need to select to mail in your returns. Once you are done, just print off and mail your CA state return and ignore the federal.