US Dept of Labor pension

[Catherine]

New clients -- retired couple. One has a pension (1099-R says "Statement of Annuity" across the top) from the US Dept of Labor.

I think I've got the taxable Federal amount calculated correctly -- gross distribution minus employee contribution.

However, I find _nothing_ that states this pension should be free from _state_ income tax. Yet the prior-year preparer did _not_ include this as taxable. The history these folks gave me show a number of communications from both the IRS and the state over the last few years on various mistakes that have been made, so I certainly don't take what they did as necessarily correct. But neither did the state ever say, "hey, what about that pension income you didn't report?"

If anyone here knows anything about US Dept of Labor pensions/annuities and the state income status (taxable/non-taxable) I'd be very grateful. The MassDOR site is next to useless in searches (at least, I've never found the trick to getting useful results out of their search engine).

TIA,

Catherine

[Catherine]

I found a TIR (tech info release) from 1989 talking about how military pensions ARE taxable since they are NOT contributory. By deductive logic, then, I have a non-taxable pension here.

Has anyone else noticed how one can look fruitlessly for an answer for a --lloonngg-- time, and then find it within a few minutes of posting a query?

Catherine

[Lion EA]

Frequent happening! And, thank you for sharing your findings with us. Saves the next one of us from reinventing the wheel.

[Kea]

Or, you lose a calculator (or any item) and search and search. Then you give up and buy a replacement. Come home & it's sitting right on the table where it was supposed to be all along.

Same idea.