I am getting desperate, why is there no info about this common situation for taxes? (NY/NJ)

[taxesarethedevil]

Then what am I supposed to do on TurboTax for this stuff?

I filled out the Federal side by just rotely pasting in the stuff from my W2s, but State taxes are a nightmare.

I started the NY stuff first (TurboTax says you should force it to do the nonresident stuff first before you do resident), and it recommended I file a NY Nonresident (Form IT-203). Fine. Were you permanently a resident in this NJ addy on Dec 31 2015? Yes. Did you maintain living quarters in NY during 2015? No. Were all your wages earned in NY? No.

"You must edit (change) each Form W-2 to allocate your New York State earnings."

Everything goes downhill from here because I have no idea how to do the allocations. I didn't work or live in NY in 2015 so I can't just use some # of days metric that it tries to offer, but even if all I did was offer a $ or % amount, I don't know which number I am supposed to use.

[camaro69]

Originally Posted by taxesarethedevil

Then what am I supposed to do on TurboTax for this stuff?

I filled out the Federal side by just rotely pasting in the stuff from my W2s, but State taxes are a nightmare.

I started the NY stuff first (TurboTax says you should force it to do the nonresident stuff first before you do resident), and it recommended I file a NY Nonresident (Form IT-203). Fine. But everything goes downhill from there because I have no idea how to do the allocations.

I haven't done the 2015 taxes yet, but each year towards the end of the state, there should be a screen that will show NY and NJ taxes for the same money and you uncheck one of the states. Otherwise you will be paying double the tax.

I don't recall which state you uncheck but Turbotax people should be able to help or at least a turbotax forum.

[taxesarethedevil]

Originally Posted by camaro69

I haven't done the 2015 taxes yet, but each year towards the end of the state, there should be a screen that will show NY and NJ taxes for the same money and you uncheck one of the states. Otherwise you will be paying double the tax.

I don't recall which state you uncheck but Turbotax people should be able to help or at least a turbotax forum.

Yeah, that part comes later -- I am fine with that piece. My problem is the allocations part.

[taxesarethedevil]

Just E-filed.

What I did was look at the NY vs NJ withholding on my paystub for the bonus, and saw that the amounts were in proportion to how much time I spent in NY vs NJ. So I took the NY percentage, applied that to my bonus to get the federally taxable amount attributable to NY, and then took that divided by the federally taxable income listed on the NY W2 to get some percentage to enter onto TurboTax.

Hope this helps someone.