Harvie and Mary Beavers

21-27

On March 3, 2020, the Department issued a return adjustment notice to the Taxpayer for a 2019 personal income tax return, which denied a credit claimed for taxes paid to another state. On March 6, 2020, the Taxpayer protested the adjustment notice. The Taxpayer, a resident of New Mexico, explained that pension income, for which the credit had been claimed, had been taxed over the years 1990 through 2006 while the Taxpayer was living and working in Pennsylvania. The Taxpayer did not pay tax to Pennsylvania in 2019. The worksheet that calculates the credit for taxes paid to another state showed amounts paid to Pennsylvania, but these amounts were not substantiated by a return or any other documents. The Taxpayer later provided federal and state income tax returns from 2006 to 2019, but the information on the returns did not support that the income being taxed was from retirement contributions and the Taxpayer did not provide any income statements or retirement account statements that would support this. Nor was there evidence that the retirement was from a retirement account like a Roth IRA, where the contributions would have been taxed, and therefore would not have been included in taxable income. Federal and state law provides that New Mexico may tax the pension income of its residents. Since the Taxpayer could not support that the pension income allocated to New Mexico had been taxed by another state, the Hearing Officer determined the Department had been correct in denying the credit and ordered the protest denied.