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I work remotely from my home office in Atlanta, GA for a NYC-based company. I started at this company in 2016 and I just received my first W-2 form. My company uses Just Works as a professional employer organization so my W-2 was issued by Just Works.

Upon looking through the W-2 I noticed that a small amount of income was counted as income in New York rather than Georgia and state taxes were withheld. I sent an email to Just Works which went as follows:

Hello,

My W-2 is showing a small amount of NY wages and NY income tax withheld. I did not live in New York at all this year. I have lived in Georgia for all of 2016. Could you please look into this and issue an updated W-2?

Thanks!

The reply I received said as follows:

Hey Daniel,

It seems as if your company had you listed as working in New York rather than being a remote employee initially which is why you had those taxes withheld. Because those taxes were withheld and remitted, we cannot change that on your W2 but you should be able to reconcile that when filing your taxes.

Sorry for the trouble!

Best,

XYZ

It may be the case that my company listed me as working in New York initially, but it's not actually true that I was a New York-based employee initially. So it seems like the company made a mistake. The email I received from Just Works makes it seem like there's not much to be done about the remitted taxes and I should reconcile them when filing my tax return.

My question is, "how do I do that?" The amount of money that was counted as NY income is well below New York's standard deduction so if I understand this correctly, it seems that I don't have to file a New York tax return. The amount of money that was withheld for New York taxes is low enough that it's not worth it to me to bother with filing a NY return (it would cost me more to file another state return than I would get back as a refund) but I would like to make sure that I pay my Georgia taxes correctly. How do I go about doing this? Furthermore, I am using Turbo Tax to do my taxes this year, so instructions within Turbo Tax would be highly appreciated!

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  • How much do you care about doing it in the by-the-book correct way, versus just doing some kind of good-faith shortcut that is probably technically incorrect? If the amount is so low that filing the NY return would erase your gains, it's probably low enough that no one is going to chase you down over it, and the amount you might have to pay to be sure you're doing things right could be more than the extra tax you owe in Georgia.
    – BrenBarn
    Jan 26, 2017 at 6:33
  • @BrenBarn I would like to at least know what the by-the-book way of doing it is. If the "technically incorrect but unlikely to get me in trouble" way is much easier, I would like to hear that as well but as a religious Jew I would need to speak with my rabbi to discuss whether the inconvenience of doing it right and the probable lack of care by Georgia about whether I do it exactly right is outweighed by the fact that I might be cheating the state out of ~$50. Furthermore, I want to avoid any headaches that could come out in the future about my brief stint "living in New York".
    – Daniel
    Jan 26, 2017 at 14:28

1 Answer 1

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Generally this gets corrected when you file returns for both States -- one owes you some refund, and younowe some money to the other. Multistate tax returns are their own special kettle of worms, so you might want to consider hiring a pro to straighten this out -- their software has some tools personal packages don't.

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    If the cost of merely filing the return alone outweighs the refund, it seems unlikely that hiring a tax pro would be worth the money.
    – BrenBarn
    Jan 26, 2017 at 6:29
  • ... point granted.
    – keshlam
    Jan 26, 2017 at 12:47

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