Moving to Georgia

Georgia taxes residents on everything and nonresidents on what they earn in Georgia, and the year you move you are both. The part-year return is Form 500 with Schedule 3, a three-column schedule that lists your income as if you had lived here all year, takes out the part Georgia cannot touch, and leaves the Georgia share. The ratio of that share to the whole then prorates your standard or itemized deduction, your $5,000 dependent exemptions, the retirement income exclusion and the new $250 child credit. The rate is the same 4.99% everyone pays. Georgia has no reciprocal agreement with any neighboring state, so a Georgia resident who works in Alabama, South Carolina or North Carolina files in both states and takes a credit on Form 500 for the other state’s tax, and a Tennessee or Florida resident who works in Georgia files a Georgia nonresident return with no credit to take, because the home state has no income tax. The 2026 move-year return is also the first one where the figures you prorate are the new ones: a $30,000 joint deduction, a $5,000 dependent, 4.99%.

Who is a resident

You are a Georgia resident if Georgia is your legal residence, your domicile: the place you treat as your permanent home, where you intend to return when you are away. The Department of Revenue puts it simply: a full-year resident lived in Georgia the entire year, regardless of temporary living arrangements elsewhere, and legal residence continues through temporary absences, a year working abroad, a semester at school, a winter in Florida. The statute adds a second test: a person who lives in Georgia on other than a temporary or transitory basis for 183 days or more of the year is a resident whether or not Georgia is the domicile. A part-year resident changed domicile during the year, in or out. A nonresident is domiciled elsewhere and has Georgia-source income.

Domicile is a question of facts, and the facts that count are the ones you can show: where your driver’s license and car registrations are, where you vote, where you claim a homestead exemption, where your doctors, church and safe-deposit box are, and where you spend your days. The state you leave cares about this more than Georgia does. A couple moving from New York, California, Illinois or Minnesota to Georgia should expect the former state to look at the year of the move, and a Georgia homestead application, a Georgia license dated the week of the move and a sold or leased-out former home are the evidence that ends the inquiry. A couple moving from Georgia to Florida or Tennessee should expect the same questions from Georgia, which has a 4.99% interest in keeping them.

The part-year return: Schedule 3

Schedule 3 has three columns. Column A is every item of income from the federal return, as if you had been a Georgia resident all year. Column B is the part not taxable to Georgia: income you received while a resident of another state, other than Georgia-source income. Column C is the Georgia share, and A must equal B plus C. Line 9 is the ratio, Column C divided by Column A, capped at 100%.

Income is assigned by when you received it and where you were. Wages go by period of residence, or by days worked in Georgia for a nonresident; the Department’s rule for vacation and sick pay, for instance, is the ratio of Georgia work days to all work days. Interest and dividends go to the state you lived in when they were paid. A pension payment received after you moved out of Georgia is not Georgia income; one received after you moved in is. A capital gain belongs to the state you lived in on the day of the sale, with one exception: gain on Georgia real estate is Georgia-source whoever sells it and wherever they live, and the buyer’s closing attorney withholds 3% of the price from a nonresident seller unless an exemption applies.

The deductions are then prorated. Schedule 3 line 10 is your Georgia standard deduction, $15,000 or $30,000, or your Georgia itemized deductions less state and local income taxes; line 11 is $5,000 times the dependents on Form 500 line 7c; and line 13 multiplies the sum by the line 9 ratio. The retirement income exclusion is prorated too, the earned and unearned pieces separately, each by the Georgia share of that kind of income. Part-year filers skip Form 500 lines 9 through 14 and carry the Schedule 3 result to line 15.

No reciprocity: the credit for taxes paid to other states

Georgia has reciprocal withholding agreements with no state. A Georgia resident who crosses into Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina or any other taxing state to work owes that state’s tax on the wages as a nonresident and owes Georgia’s tax on the same wages as a resident, and the credit on Form 500 line 18 keeps it from being paid twice. The credit is the lesser of the other state’s tax on the income or Georgia’s tax on it; the booklet’s worksheet figures the Georgia tax on that income after a proportional share of your deductions. If the other state’s rate is higher than 4.99%, as South Carolina’s top rate is, you pay the difference to the other state and Georgia collects nothing on those wages. If it is lower, you pay the difference to Georgia. A copy of the other state’s return must be attached or the credit is denied. The credit is for states, the District of Columbia and U.S. local income taxes; tax paid to a foreign country or a U.S. possession does not count.

Tennessee and Florida residents who work in Georgia have the opposite picture. Georgia taxes the wages earned here on a nonresident Form 500 with Schedule 3, there is no home-state tax to credit, and the Georgia tax is simply the cost of working across the line. One narrow escape: a nonresident whose only Georgia activity is working as an employee owes nothing and need not file if the Georgia wages are no more than the lesser of 5% of total wages or $5,000. That protects the occasional meeting in Atlanta, not the daily commute from Chattanooga.

Remote work on either side of the line

Georgia taxes wages by where the work is done and has no convenience-of-the-employer rule. Two cases cover most people.

A Georgia resident working from home for an employer in another state owes Georgia on all of it, as a resident, and usually owes the employer’s state nothing, because no work was done there. The exceptions are the states with convenience rules, New York chiefly, which tax a nonresident’s home-office days as if worked in the state; a Georgia resident on a New York payroll can be taxed by both, and the line 18 credit covers the overlap only up to Georgia’s tax on that income.

A resident of another state working from home for a Georgia employer owes Georgia nothing on the days worked outside Georgia; only the days physically in Georgia are Georgia-source, apportioned by work days, and the 5%/$5,000 rule may excuse the return altogether. The employer may still withhold Georgia tax out of habit; the nonresident return gets it back.

Military pay has its own rules. A service member whose home of record is Georgia is taxed by Georgia on military pay wherever stationed. A service member from another state stationed in Georgia is not taxed by Georgia on military pay, and under the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act the spouse may keep the home state too, so the spouse’s Georgia wages escape Georgia tax; the booklet covers the paperwork.

Retirees who move

Federal law since 1996 bars any state from taxing retirement income of a person who no longer lives there. A pension earned over thirty years in Ohio and paid to a new Georgia resident is Georgia’s to tax, and Georgia does tax it, inside the retirement income exclusion: $35,000 per person at 62, $65,000 at 65. A Georgia teacher’s pension paid to a retiree who has moved to Florida is not taxed by Georgia at all. In the year of the move, pension and IRA payments are split by the date received, the exclusion is prorated by the Georgia share, and Social Security comes off in full either way. A retiree planning a Roth conversion around a move should do it in the state where it is cheapest: in Georgia at 65 if the exclusion has room, in Florida or Tennessee if not, and in neither state’s move year, when the prorated exclusion is smallest. The details are in Georgia for retirees.

The year you move: a checklist

• Record the date. The move date splits every 1099 and the exclusion, and the other state will ask for it.
• Give the new Georgia employer a Form G-4 the first week; give a former employer in a taxing state notice to stop withholding there.
• Change the driver’s license, car registrations and voter registration within the month. These are the documents that prove domicile in both directions.
• Apply for the Georgia homestead exemption at the county tax commissioner by April 1 of the first year you own and live in the home on January 1. Ask about the local senior exemptions if you are 62 or older.
• Open a Georgia Tax Center account at gtc.dor.ga.gov for payments, refund status and letters.
• Ask each pension payer and IRA custodian for Georgia withholding only if your income will exceed the exclusion; most retirees need none.
• Keep a day log if you will keep working in or for the former state, or keep a home there.
• If you moved out of Georgia, cancel the Georgia homestead exemption and expect a part-year Form 500 for the final year; a Georgia-source rental or business keeps you filing as a nonresident afterward.
• The HB 1000 surplus refund paid in 2026 went to filers of both the 2024 and 2025 Georgia returns, including part-year filers; nothing is enacted for 2027.