Where do I file my taxes?

March 20, 2009 3:02 PM

What state (or DC) do I have to pay tax in?

I am a Colorado resident. This summer, I lived in Virginia and worked and was paid in Washington, DC, for about 3 months. From the perspective of my job, my address remained throughout those three months Colorado, not my temporary VA housing.

This is confusing because D-40B contemplates living in DC temporarily, but not working in DC only on a temporary basis without living there. (http://otr.cfo.dc.gov/otr/frames.asp?doc=/otr/lib/otr/2008_d-40b.pdf)

I'd be interested if anyone specifically knew DC law on this point, as opposed to just the general principle of where you pay tax.

posted by yesno to work & money (6 comments total)

I'm virtually certain (although I wish it were otherwise) that if you don't live in DC, you don't pay any income tax in DC. Washington has no ability to claim any tax on non-residents who earn income in the District. While I can't quote the law, i know that when my company payrolls out of town employees, we only worry about the income tax withholding for their state of residence.
posted by jindc at 3:16 PM on March 20

When I lived in NY and worked in NJ, I had to file in both. Filed in NY as state of residence, and filed in NJ as a non-resident employee. NJ sent me all the state withholding, which I sent to NY.
posted by Marky at 3:35 PM on March 20

I live in Virginia and work in D.C., and I am not required to pay D.C. taxes. I can't think of a situation where you would be required to pay D.C. taxes if you were not a D.C. resident at any point during the year. The District doesn't have a commuter tax for those who work in the city but live elsewhere, if that's the sort of thing you're worried about.

Do you need to file a form D-40B because your summer job withheld state taxes and sent them D.C., and you'd like a refund? Or are you just worried about figuring out where you need to file? When I was a (paid) intern in D.C. for a summer during college, I worked in D.C., lived in Maryland for a few months, was attending school full-time in Iowa the rest of the year, and maintained permanent residency in Colorado. All of my state taxes on my D.C. earnings were paid to Colorado, and I never had a problem with that.

If you're very worried about doing this wrong, then you should talk to a tax lawyer. If you're just a student who made a couple hundred bucks this summer and you're not quite sure how this works, you should prepare a tax return using the free software available from the IRS website. (I really like TurboTax, which should be free if you earn less than $30K a year.) Their state module should walk you through a couple of questions that will tell you where you need to file, and that might give you some reassurance that you're filing correctly.
posted by iminurmefi at 3:53 PM on March 20

DC is different from some other places: as between DC, Maryland, and Virginia, taxes are paid based on where you lived when you earned money, even if you worked in a different jurisdiction. (Note, this is different from the NY/NJ case.) So you owe no DC income tax; you owe Virginia taxes on the money earned while you lived in Virginia. You will probably need to file as a part-year resident of Virginia. Your DC employer should have asked you where you lived and withheld for the appropriate jurisdiction; if they withheld for DC instead, you can file DC Form D-40B, Non-Resident Request for Refund to obtain a refund of that payment.

This is not legal or accounting advice; consult competent counsel.
posted by raf at 7:08 PM on March 20

Oh, and form D-40B seems to be getting at the question of whether you can count as a nonresident even if you did reside in the District for part of the year. I think the correct answer to all those "DC address" questions is "none."
posted by raf at 7:10 PM on March 20

Look on the W2 your employer sent you; what state does it have on it? That's the state that your employer sent tax money to. If they had your Colorado address my suspicion is that's probably where the money went, and you shouldn't need to do any DC/VA screwing around. If they paid it to DC or VA though, then you may have an issue. (Especially if they paid it to VA, because then you are going to have to get into a discussion of whether you were technically a resident there.)
posted by Kadin2048 at 9:37 PM on March 20