If you travel to another state and work even a single day there, you might have to file an extra tax return next tax season.
In five states, nonresidents must file a tax return if they earn any income in the state during the course of the year, according to the Tax Foundation.
Those states are:
- Arkansas
- Delaware
- Kansas
- Michigan
- Nebraska
Other states also require nonresidents to file returns if they earn income in the state, but only if they also make enough total income to require filing a federal tax return. They include:
- Colorado
- Maryland
- New Mexico
- North Dakota
- Rhode Island
Generally, folks are required to file a federal return when their gross income exceeds the standard deduction — a flat amount that, for the 2024 tax year, is $14,600 for single filers and $29,200 for married couples filing jointly. That accounts for the bulk of workers.
Additional states have their own criteria for when nonresidents must file tax returns after earning income in the state. In all, nearly half of states have some type of requirement that nonresidents file a tax return if they earn a specified amount of money working in that state during the year.
The Tax Foundation says relatively few taxpayers comply with these rules, and few states enforce them. Writing about the issue on the Tax Foundation website, Katherine Loughead, senior policy analyst and research manager, notes that the laws are a relic of the past:
“Most of the overly stringent nonresident income tax filing laws that remain on the books today are the product of a bygone era, when most people worked from one location, and work travel was less widespread. Those days had long since passed even before the pandemic, but that is especially true now, in an era when so many people can — and do — work from anywhere with internet access.”
As things stand now, most Americans are unaware of the rules, and “very few would go to the effort of filing income tax returns in every single state in which they work for a day or answer some emails while on vacation,” Loughead writes.
She notes that the foundation’s official position is to urge states to update their laws and adopt “reasonable nonresident filing thresholds.”
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