I suspect that there is an exception for students – certainly any income they earn while in state would be subject to state tax, but (most likely) as a non-resident rather than as a resident.
At least that’s the case in Maine, as far as I know (just an example of another state…)
Agree with @colfac92
If this Minnesota student is a permanent resident of another state…they cannot also be a permanent resident of Minnesota. But there might still be a requirement to file Minnesota taxes as a non-resident.
Like I said upstream someplace…both of ou kids went to college OOS. And both needed to file taxes where their colleges were located…as non-residents. They filed in our home state as residents. He year he kid had a few other states in which he worked…and had to file…but that didn’t mean he was a resident elsewhere.
No, that would be determined by the Internal Revenue Code and/or IRS regulations.
Here’s part of what the applicable Minnesota statute says about residency requirements to participate in an election in Minnesota:
The residence of an individual is in the precinct where the individual’s home is located, from which the individual has no present intention of moving, and to which, whenever the individual is absent, the individual intends to return.
https://www.revisor.mn.gov/statutes/cite/200.031
Simply put, in my opinion, if the voter’s/student’s parents live in another state, this requirement to cast a ballot in Minnesota is not compatible with the IRS residency requirement that allows “temporary absence” at school to count towards the time living with the parent(s) necessary to allow the student to be claimed as a tax dependent.
Of course, but that wasn’t the point. Virginia’s election reg website specifically references college ‘dorms’. That same website also says that to register, “a prospective voter must have a physical location where they intend to stay for an unlimited time.”
Those two statements appear to be in conflict, or at a minimum are confusing, for some/many dormers from OOS. Of course, the student could always ‘intend’ to stay and look for a summer apt and job in C’Ville to satisfy the ‘unlimited time’ requirement…but not sure that any of that is explained to them.
I’m pretty sure that would be an unconstitutional requirement, if interpreted literally.
In any case, that’s not what Virginia law says. The actual law is:
Virginia Election Code § 24.2-101
Note that “particular locality” is NOT the same as “physical location”.
And “intention to remain” is NOT the same as “intend to stay for an unlimited time.”
I suspect the vast majority of college students in Minnesota easily meet this requirement. You have a dorm room or apartment, you consider it your current home, you may leave occasionally (including trips to visit your parents) but when you do leave you intend to return—and you do in fact return. And you have no present intention to relocate at the time the election is held. It says nothing about a permanent commitment to that place. Bingo, you’re eligible to vote. And by the way, an enormous number of college students who don’t actually bother to register to vote easily meet this eligibility requirement, so if you’re right that anyone who meets the requirement is ineligible to counted as a dependent for IRS purposes, we’re probably talking about a majority of college students
Whether that’s incompatible with IRS rules on whether that student’s parents can count the student as a dependent is for the IRS to decide, but until the IRS says it’s an issue, I’d treat it as a non-issue. Frankly, I don’t think they have any interest in challenging the dependency status of millions of college students.
Really, they are two entirely separate things, with definitions for different purposes, and different policy considerations. The federal government wants parents to claim eligible young adults as dependents because it bumps up the tax rate of their unearned income, and because the federal aid system is set up with the assumption that undergraduate college students are dependents up through age 23. They don’t want to start paying out Pell grants to youngsters with well-to-do parents based on where the kid has decided to sign up to vote. So all of that is a money thing.
But for elections, it makes sense to have a well informed and involved electorate – as well as people who have a stake in local outcomes. And it’s important also to give people ballot access – and many college students learn too late that the whole absentee ballot / vote by mail thing doesn’t always work like it should. So it makes a lot of sense to register to vote in a place where you actually are going to be able to make it to the polls on election day.
@calmom Your student can still be a dependent for kiddie tax purposes (i.e. being “A full-time student at least age 19 and under age 24 at the end of 2018 and didn’t have earned income that was more than half of his or her support.”) and FAFSA without you necessarily being eligible to claim the dependent tax credit (which requires them to live with you for more than half the year).
@bclintonk “Bingo, you’re eligible to vote.” No one’s saying that Minnesota students wouldn’t be eligible to vote. But if they take the affirmative action to register to vote at college then they are affirming that they are residing there indefinitely and therefore not temporarily absent from their parents’ home.
If they don’t take an affirmative action to demonstrate residency (registering to vote, getting a MN drivers license etc), then their domicile will continue to be at their parents’ home from which they will be temporarily absent. Most students will likely fall into this second category not the first.
I don’t understand your assertion that “until the IRS says it’s an issue, I’d treat it as a non-issue”. The IRS sets out the rules, it’s up to you to interpret them and then decide whether to comply.
You’re missing the big picture. A person can only have one state of legal residence at any one time. You may consider a dorm room or apartment away at college to be your “current home,” and you may “intend to return” to it after you go home for Christmas, but unless you take an affirmative action (like registering to vote in the state where your college is), you haven’t expressed an intent to remain there permanently or for an indefinite period of time.
Once that intent has been expressed in a legal sense, for example by registering to vote, your time away from your parents’ home in a different state can no longer be classified as temporary absences – in fact, the positions have flipped, and now your visits to your parents are temporary absences from your legal residence in the state where you have registered to vote.
There has been enough back and forth here that I’m pretty sure one of us isn’t going to convince the other that our point of view is correct. That’s ok. One of the problems with so many parts of the law, including tax law and legal residency requirements, is that very often there are no simple black and white answers to questions. That’s one reason we have courts and judges. OP took a broad look at the ramifications of a daughter registering to vote in a state away from home, and asked some good questions so that proper action can be taken for tax planning and filing.
Then the state election website is incorrect, misleading, or confusing, or all of the above. How is an 18-year-old supposed to know?
That’s true for federal voting but not true for other purposes, and states can allow people to vote in state elections if they want to; some do for local elections that concern property rights for cottage owners in resort locations. People HAVE two homes. Sometimes they spend the same amount of time at both, or a third, or a fourth state. Some work in states where they own no home but are considered instate residents for income tax purposes. My sister and her husband have two homes and one is his permanent residence and one is hers (for voting, for car registration), Which is the permanent residence of their college age kids. who spent 95% of their time at their college addresses? Mitt Romney has 5-6 homes, but I’m pretty sure he is (now) registered to vote in Utah, but also sure he has cars registered at his homes in CA and NH and MA.
If one state defines resident as one who lives there for 183 days but the homeowner doesn’t spend 183 nights there but has a state ID and registers a car and registers to vote, are they not a resident?
As has already been mentioned in this thread, there may be different definitions and requirements for different purposes. I have a boat that is registered and kept in a state that is not the same state where I live most of the time, vote, and pay state taxes as a resident. Does that mean that I am a legal resident of the state where the boat is registered and used, or that I can’t be a legal resident of my “home” state because I have a boat registered in a different state? No, of course not. Simply put, as a general statement, you can only be a legal resident of one state at any one time. If you have significant connections with multiple states, pick the one where you want to be considered a legal resident based on whatever consequences are most important to you, and conform your activities to meet the rules.
Where is this written in stone? Perhaps you can have only one state of domicile, but that is not the same as residence.
Again, a person may be legally a resident of different states for different purposes. For state income tax purposes, for example, it’s often possible (though not necessarily desirable) to be a resident of two states at the same time. Both your state of domicile (where you intend to make your permanent home) and the state where you are actually living and working for more than half the year will in many cases insist that, as a matter of their law (“legally”), you are a resident and must pay resident income taxes (though in many cases your state of domicile will give you credit for income taxes paid to the other state). Minnesota says college students from Minnesota attending school in another state remain (legally) Minnesota residents for state tax purposes, but out-of-state students become Minnesota residents for state tax purposes if they spend at least 183 days in Minnesota in any calendar year, “even if you have permanent residency in another state.”
Florida says you’re legally a Florida resident if you enroll your child in a Florida public school or accept employment in Florida, and among other things must get a Florida driver’s license. Yet many people domiciled in other states live and work in Florida temporarily, enrolling their children in Florida schools and working in Florida, all the while intending to return to their “permanent” residence in their state of domicile.
Florida also says you’re legally a Florida resident if you reside in Florida for six consecutive months. By that definition, many “snowbirds” from northern states are legally deemed Florida residents even though they are domiciled in northern states where they maintain homes they consider their “primary” and “permanent” residence and where they intend to return.
If a state requires domiciliary status to be eligible to vote, then yes, registering to vote might signal a change in domiciliary status—though most definitions of domicile say where you’re registered to vote is only one indicator among many, none of which alone determines domicile. But in a state that doesn’t require domiciliary status (e.g., Minnesota), I don’t see any reason why registering to vote would signal such a change.
As has already been noted, there may be different definitions and requirements for different purposes. The primary issue that precipitated this thread was one of the consequences of a child registering to vote in a state other than where the parents live. Do you not agree that generally a person can only legally vote in one location at any given time? In regards to Minnesota specifically, Minnesota law says that a Minnesota voter’s residence is the location “from which the individual has no present intention of moving, and to which, whenever the individual is absent, the individual intends to return.” Again, my point is that this requirement as described presents a problem in the context of claiming that a possible tax dependent who has registered to vote in Minnesota is while away at school only “temporarily absent” from the parents’ home in a different state. Other states have language that is even more definitive.
There are at least 50 sets of laws that define different requirements for enjoying the privileges and assuming the responsibilities of being a “legal resident” of a state. We could spend hundreds of posts debating how those laws interact with every aspect of our lives.
“The primary issue that precipitated this thread was one of the consequences of a child registering to vote in a state other than where the parents live.”
Or even in some cases changing registration in the same state if living away from home at college (as per my example in California, which says you vote in the location of your domicile http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=ELEC§ionNum=349 though fortunately my son did not change his voter registration).
But it works the other way too – the student can be independent for tax purposes (no longer in school and self-supporting) – but dependent for FAFSA purposes. The point is that the definitions can be different under different laws, for different purposes.
A taxpaying parent of a college student living away from the family home has no way of knowing whether or not that student has registered to vote at their campus or not, unless the student tells them. And the parent might also have a different intent as to permanent vs. temporary than their offspring. Just because the kid fully intends to stay away doesn’t mean the kid won’t end up living in the parent’s home post-college. I suppose if the parent sells their home in the interim and moves into a small apartment then there is no parental domicile to come back to— but other parents might simply assume that if their kid doesn’t find a job right away, the student will come home. Of course, once the student graduates they will no longer be a full-time student, so the parent will likely lose the ability to claim the tax credit the following year in any case — but the point is, the offspring’s statement of intention is not what governs the determination of the parent’s tax options.
Hypothetical: a new college student leaves his parents’ home to start his first year at an expensive school in a different state, with mom and dad covering the full cost. On the way out the door the student says, “I’m never coming back here.” In the first month of college, the student registers to vote in the state where the college is located, changes his driver’s license from the old state to the new state, gets a part time job at a local pizza place (where he works full-time during school breaks), opens savings and checking accounts at a bank within walking distance of the dorm, and starts scoping out local apartments to live in over the next summer.
Does the student pass the residency part of the IRS test used to determine eligibility to be claimed as a dependent on his parents’ tax return for the next tax year? If so, the student’s absence from the parents’ home while at school would have to be designated “temporary.” The student passes all other parts of the test to be claimed as a dependent on the parents’ tax return (relationship, age, support and joint return).
I would claim the credit so long as you are paying the bills.
Read pub 970 and follow that carefully. What a state has to say doesn’t really matter for your federal return.
The issue is not one of eligibility for claiming an education tax credit (which I assume is why you are referencing pub 970); it’s about a child’s eligibility to be claimed as a tax dependent so that the parents can take advantage of the $500 dependent credit. That would be covered in both the 1040 instructions and pub 17. Under the hypothetical, does the child/student pass the residency part of the IRS (not state) test?