Georgia state income tax bullshit

[sparr]

If you make $10k in Georgia and are eligible for the $5k standard deduction, you owe GA state income tax on $5000 of taxable income.
If you lived here only half the year and made $10k in Tennessee during the other half, your $5k standard deduction is cut in half, resulting in $7500 of your Georgia income being taxable in Georgia.

I call shenanigans.

A friend suggested this arrangement could be to disincentivize tax sheltering, which is admittedly a concern since TN (among a few other states) does not have a state income tax. Even if that reason is sound, which I do not agree with, this is a bogus implementation. It very unfairly affects lower income residents, particularly those with balanced in and out of state incomes. If you make $100k in TN and $10k in GA, your GA taxable income goes up to (almost) $10k, which only reduces your tax-shelter factor by about 5%. While in the first example case (much closer to my situation), of a low balanced income, the obviously-not-a-tax-shelter tax-shelter factor is reduced by 25%.

The total difference is, to be realistic, only about $60 in taxes, but it is $60 that I should not have to pay!

I would actually be less annoyed if GA claimed a right to tax my TN income.  I would still disagree, but on a more fundamental policy basis rather than on a "what idiot designed this system" basis.
 

Comments

[sparr0.livejournal.com]

Ahh, but again, the implementation is the sticking point. If they based it on how long I had lived in GA (which they actually ask for on the form, but then ignore in the math), that would also be less unacceptable.