Mark Bole wrote:

- quote -

Interesting that you should raise the issue.

The matter of marital property where one spouse is domciled
in a community property state and the other is not is an
open question. (I write this after having downloaded dozens
and dozens of cases on CP/SP from Westlaw in pursuit of an
answer.)

An interesting case is Lane-Burslem v. Commissioner of
Internal Revenue, 70 T.C. 613 (1978) (community property
issue; domicile of nonresident alien husband). Congress in
due course legislated to make it impossible for a federal
civil service employee stationed abroad to claim (under the
law of a US state or foreign country) that his/her wages
were half-attributable to a NRA spouse and thus non-taxable
in the USA.

It used to be that a wife's domicile was the same as her
husband's, even if she had never lived in that location.
That could still be the case, but is less likely today. On
the other hand, the domicile of a minor child can be a place
where that child has never visited.

In international cases, tax treaties try to deal (by
tie-breaker rules) with conflicts. It doesn't always work
and cross border families (inter-state or international) can
wind up faced with doubole taxation without relief. Unless
there is treaty, interstate compact or unilateral relief.

Don't forget that residency (especially statutory or actual residence)
differs from domicile. One can have only one domicile for a single
purpose (although different jurisdictions can conflict on the issue),
but one may have two or more residences. Wealthy taxpayers depend on
tax counsel to prevent them from being taxed twice without relief.

The issue you have researched is so arcane that there are few
professional sources for authoritative information.

<< ================================================== ===== > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting > << messages to this newsgroup are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2006) - All rights reserved. > << ================================================== ===== >

The regular contributors (whom you can identify if you
perform some archive searches from time to time) perform a
valuable service, from what I've experienced (but then, some
of you knew that already!)

What prompted me in particular to write this note was a
search on "domicile married" that led me to a thread from
October 2000 entitled "married couple living in separate
states", which is exactly the topic I was trying to
research. I could not find useful info on this in any of
the other places I looked.

Among other excellent responses was one from "Katie in San
Diego", which enlightened me on the following:

* determination of state residency based on domicile or
statute
* community property states -- specific issues
* different approaches by state to taxing global income
* filing status dependencies (e.g. state filing status depends
on federal)
* credit for other state tax, reciprocal agreements, etc

-Mark Bole

<< ================================================== ===== > << The foregoing was not intended or written to be used, > << nor can it used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties > << that may be imposed upon the taxpayer. > << > << The Charter and the Guidelines for submitting > << messages to this newsgroup are at www.asktax.org. > << Copyright (2006) - All rights reserved. > << ================================================== ===== >