MFJ - Spouse Part Residency in PA to MO
Hello all,
My wife and I are filing federal MFJ due to tax benefits. I am a full-time Missouri resident. She moved from Pennsylvania to Missouri mid-year, but before 12/31/24 when we got married in September. All of her income is PA income and all of my income is MO income. should we file state tax returns separately? I am having a hard time figuring out how to divvy up our income based on the State portion of the FreeTaxUSA software walkthrough.
Answers
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Hi Wballard:
Our software doesn't allow for the separation of residency statuses. However, there is a way to report this using our software, it just takes a little bit of extra effort.
Here is where it gets tricky. Missouri requires taxpayers to use the same filing status as the federal. This means that if you plan on filing joint for your federal return, you would need to file jointly for the Missouri return. This means that your wife's income that was earned prior to moving to MO would be considered MO income. I am also assuming that she stopped working for the PA company when she moved to MO.
For PA, you do not need to use the same filing status as your federal return. To do this using our software, you would need to create a 2nd FreeTaxUSA account just for her. She would enter all of only her income, etc. and select Married Filing Separately as her filing status. Then, she would select to prepare a part-year resident return for PA. Depending on if she continued to earn income from any source while living in MO, she would allocate just the income earned while living in PA. Additionally, assuming you filed jointly on your federal return (and subsequently filed jointly on your MO return) you could most likely claim the Credit for Taxes Paid on this PA return. This is because (by filing jointly above) Missouri is "taxing" her income that she earned while not living in Missouri and therefore it is being "double taxed" both on this part-year resident PA return, and the full year resident Missouri return.
She would NOT e-file this return, but select to mail it. When asked for the filing method for both returns on this account, she will select to 'mail'. She will not mail in the federal return prepared on this account. And when she mails in her PA return, she will include the actual filed federal return from account #1.
If you decide to file your federal returns separately, then that would be simpler. However, many taxpayers want to avoid this as most often filing jointly is more beneficial than filing separately on a federal return.
Again, this information is assuming that she quit her job in PA when she moved to MO. If this is not the case, then there is another layer of credits that complicates things.
PA information is found on page 7 of this link:
MO information is found on page 6 of this link:
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