My son has a slightly irregular situation. He will be filing independent this year because I did not provide over 50% of his support in 2015. I have done the math and I am sure of this as he had loans and worked. This will be the case going forward. I live in Colorado and he goes to school in Connecticut. He was in Colorado for 3 weeks last year. The wrinkle is that he spent the rest of the time in France. He is registered to vote in Connecticut but holds a Colorado drivers license. All his income, both earned and unearned, is in Connecticut.
I don’t see why he would file a CO state return, but I want to make sure that this is correct.
Between his loan and his job, he did provide more than 50% of his support. The rest of his support was through scholarships which is just unearned income on his part. The earned part (loan and job) definitely represents more than 50%.
I’m confused by this. I would think that the entire cost of his support would be calculated by adding together the scholarships, loans, parent provided and earned to get a total. Then the question is whether the amount he earned is more than half of that, right? Is the scholarship really his income?I would not think so. If it were, then the majority of college students would not be eligible to be considered a dependent as that value is often higher than the amount that the parents provide directly to support the student.
@lostaccount - No, what I am saying is that his scholarships don’t count when determining support, i.e., he can’t say that he is using the scholarship to determine the 50% of his support. The scholarships do not come into play when determining support. What does count as his support are any loans he took out or any money he earned with his student job. When I add that amount together it is over $6,000. This definitely is more than I spent on his support last year as he is basically a meets-full-need kid at a very generous school.
Being registered to vote in Connecticut presumes that he’s a legal resident of a Connecticut municipality, which means that he should file taxes as a Connecticut resident. It also means that he needs to trade in his Colorado driver’s license for a Connecticut driver’s license, and if he owns a car, it should be registered in Connecticut. He would only file a Colorado tax return if he had income that was sourced to Colorado, and in that case it would be a non-resident Colorado tax return.
College students have the right to register to vote in their temporary place of residence at their colleges (Supreme Court said so). It does not signal an intent to move to that state or become a permanent resident. The is also no obligation, again in any state I know of, to change a driver’s license if one is only living there temporarily. All the snowbirds and military and college students may spend more than half the year in one state, but still maintain their primary residence in another. The only law is you can only vote in one state in any one election.
He earned the money in Connecticut. He will have to file a CT non-resident filer form, and then he might have to file a Colorado form where he’ll get credit for taxes paid to CT for income earned there, so likely, even IF he has to file a Colorado return (pretty unlikely), he’d get credit for all the tax paid in CT. Many people live in one state and work in another (or earn money in another, so they have to file a non-resident state return), and, and they file where they earned the money and then, if required, in the state where they live.
This is wrong, and if you want to provide the citation for the Supreme Court case that you claim supports your position, I would be happy to review it and point out where your logic is flawed. A person can only have one legal residence at any one time. What the Supreme Court said is that a college student cannot be barred from registering to vote in the state where they are attending school, but in that act the student is now claiming that the state where the school is located is now their new state of legal residence (assuming the student previously claimed a different state as the state of legal residence). Along with the right to vote in this new state of legal residence come the other obligations and rights of being a legal resident of this state, including the obligation to get a driver’s license in the new state, if the student wants to operate a motor vehicle.
Military are covered under the Soldiers and Sailors Civil Relief Act; different rules apply as compared to non-military. This is why a member of the military can be stationed somewhere for a long period of time (many years) and still legally maintain a state of residence in a different state.