Moving to New York

You are a New York resident if New York is your domicile, the one place you intend as your permanent home, or if you are a statutory resident: you keep a permanent place of abode in the state for substantially all of the year and spend 184 days or more in it, with any part of a day counting as a day. Either test is enough. A Connecticut family that keeps a Manhattan apartment and spends 184 days in the city is taxed by New York State and New York City on all of its income, wherever earned, even though its domicile never moved. A retiree who buys a Florida condo but keeps the Westchester house and the Westchester routine is still domiciled in New York until the Department of Taxation and Finance is persuaded otherwise, and the Department is not easily persuaded. The same two tests, with the city’s name substituted, decide New York City and Yonkers residency.

Residents report everything and take a credit for tax paid elsewhere. Nonresidents report only New York-source income. Part-year residents do both, split at the date of the move, on a single Form IT-203. The rest of this article is how each works and what to do the year you move.

Domicile

The Department’s definition is short: domicile is the place you intend to be your permanent home, where you intend to return when away, and you can have only one. A New York domicile “does not change until you can demonstrate that you have abandoned your New York domicile” and established a new one. The burden is on the taxpayer, and the Department’s auditors weigh five primary factors: the size, value and use of the homes in each place; where the business is conducted; the time spent in each place; where the “near and dear” items live, the family photographs, the heirlooms, the pets; and where the family is. Driver’s licenses, voter registration and the address on the tax return are secondary; they are expected and prove little by themselves.

Two exceptions let a New York domiciliary be treated as a nonresident. Group A: no permanent place of abode in New York during the year, a permanent place of abode elsewhere for the entire year, and 30 days or fewer in New York. Group B, for people posted abroad: at least 450 days in a foreign country within any 548 consecutive days, with the taxpayer, spouse and minor children spending 90 days or fewer in New York during that period, and a prorated limit during the partial years at either end.

Statutory residency: the apartment and the 184 days

A permanent place of abode is a dwelling you maintain, owned or rented, suitable for year-round living, and it includes a place your spouse owns or leases. A vacation cabin without heat does not count; a Manhattan one-bedroom kept for work nights does. “Substantially all of the year” means roughly eleven months in the Department’s audit guidelines (verify). Then the count: 184 days in New York State, or in the city for city purposes, with any part of a day counting, so that landing at LaGuardia at 11 p.m. is a New York day and a day trip from Greenwich to a Midtown meeting is a New York day. Days in transit through the state and days in a hospital are the main exceptions.

The Department audits statutory residency with cell phone records, credit card statements, E-ZPass and building swipe logs. The taxpayer keeps the day count, and a taxpayer without a contemporaneous calendar generally loses the close cases. Anyone with a New York abode who is near the line should keep a daily log and the receipts that back it up.

The part-year return

The year you move in or out, you file Form IT-203 as a part-year resident. The form computes tax as if you had been a full-year resident on all your income for the year, then multiplies by the New York income percentage: income from the resident period plus New York-source income from the nonresident period, over total federal income. The standard deduction and dependent exemptions are not prorated directly; the percentage does the prorating. Pension, IRA and Social Security income is allocated by the date each payment was received, and wages by where and when they were earned. A part-year New York City resident adds Form IT-360.1 for the city tax on the resident months.

Two things about the part-year year catch people. The refundable Empire State child credit requires a full year of residency, so the move year gets none of it; the earned income credit and the child care credit are prorated. And New York’s special accrual rules require someone leaving the state to include, on the resident portion of the return, income they had a right to but had not yet received, such as a bonus earned before the move and paid after it, unless they post a bond or the income will be taxed as New York-source anyway (verify).

No reciprocity, and the resident credit

New York has no reciprocal agreement with any state. A New Jersey, Connecticut or Pennsylvania resident who works in New York files a New York nonresident return every year, pays New York on the wages, and claims a credit on the home-state return. Going the other way, a New York resident who works in New Jersey pays New Jersey first and takes New York’s resident credit on Form IT-112-R, which is the lesser of the tax actually paid to the other state or the New York tax on the same income. Because New York’s rates are usually higher, the credit wipes out the other state’s tax and New York collects the difference. The credit covers wages and business income taxed by another state, its localities, the District of Columbia, or a Canadian province (Form IT-112-C). It does not cover interest, dividends, gambling or lottery winnings, which are taxed where you live, and it is nonrefundable.

One gap: the credit does not reach New York City tax. A city resident who works in Philadelphia and pays that city’s wage tax gets a New York State credit for the Pennsylvania state tax, but nothing against the New York City tax for the Philadelphia wage tax (verify).

The convenience of the employer rule

This is the rule that generates more questions than any other. A nonresident is taxed on wages for days worked in New York. Under New York’s regulation, a nonresident whose primary office is in New York is also taxed on days worked at home in another state, unless the work was done out of state out of necessity rather than convenience, which in practice means the employer has established a bona fide office at the employee’s home location under the factors in TSB-M-06(5)I. The Department’s own nonresident FAQ puts it directly: if your primary office is in New York, “your days telecommuting are considered days worked in the state” unless the employer has established a bona fide employer office where you telecommute.

So a New Jersey resident on a Manhattan payroll who goes to the office three days a week and works from her kitchen two days owes New York on all five. New Jersey gives her a credit for the New York tax, so she is not taxed twice, but she pays New York’s higher rate on everything and New Jersey collects nothing. New Jersey responded in 2023 with a mirror rule of its own and a bounty for residents who challenge New York’s rule in court (verify current status); Connecticut has a similar reciprocal provision. The litigation over whether New York may tax a nonresident’s home-office days has not gone the taxpayer’s way, and nothing in 2026 law changes it. An employee who has genuinely relocated and whose employer has reassigned her to an office in her new state is outside the rule; an employee who simply works from home for a New York office is inside it.

Leaving New York: retirement income, and what the audit looks at

Federal law, 4 U.S.C. 114, bars any state from taxing the qualified-plan pension, IRA and most deferred compensation income of someone who no longer lives there, however much of it was earned in New York. The Department’s IT-203 instructions say so. A New York pension paid to a Florida resident is Florida’s to tax, and Florida does not. What New York can still tax after you leave: wages for days worked in New York, income from a New York business or rental, gain on New York real estate, and, under the convenience rule, home-office days for a New York employer.

The move itself is the audit target. The Department routinely questions people who file a final resident return and a first nonresident return, and the questions follow the primary factors. What persuades: selling or substantially downsizing the New York home; moving the business, the doctors, the club memberships and the safe deposit box; moving the near-and-dear items; keeping a day count that shows more time in the new state than in New York; and being consistent across the driver’s license, voter registration, homestead exemption, estate plan and tax returns. What does not persuade: a Florida driver’s license and a declaration of domicile while the New York house stays furnished and the family keeps spending its summers there.

New York City and Yonkers

City residency is tested the same way and audited the same way. A New Jersey commuter owes the city nothing; a Brooklyn resident owes the city tax on all income; a Connecticut domiciliary with a city apartment and 184 city days owes it too. Nonresidents who work in the city pay no city tax at all. Yonkers is different in one respect: nonresidents who work there pay a 0.5% earnings tax on wages and self-employment income earned in Yonkers, on Form Y-203, while residents pay a surcharge of 16.75% of their state tax. Part-year city residents use Form IT-360.1; the IT-203 asks for the number of months in the city.