Does the IRS streamlined filing programme cover my state tax returns?

No. The Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures are federal only. The IRS guidance covers delinquent or amended federal returns, required information returns and FBARs, and the penalty relief it offers is federal penalty relief. No state amnesty, penalty waiver or look-back concession is included, and Form 14653 makes no representation to any state. Any state filing obligation must be dealt with separately through that state's own procedures.

Can a US state still tax me if I have been UK resident for years?

Yes, if you never abandoned your state domicile. Most states tax domiciliaries on worldwide income regardless of where they live. Virginia, for example, states that a Virginian working abroad remains a domiciliary resident unless appropriate steps are taken to abandon Virginia as the state of domicile. Being UK resident under the statutory residence test at gov.uk has no effect on that state analysis at all.

Does the US-UK double tax treaty stop a state from taxing me?

Not automatically. The treaty is an agreement between the United States and the United Kingdom as national governments. Individual states are not parties to it and are not obliged to give effect to its provisions in their own income tax codes. Some states follow federal concepts closely and others do not. Paying UK tax on the same income is therefore not, by itself, a defence to a state assessment or a state residency determination.

Is there a state version of the streamlined procedures?

There is no fifty-state programme and no state equivalent of Form 14653. Most states instead operate a voluntary disclosure agreement or programme through their revenue department. The common pattern is a limited look-back period, waiver of civil penalties with tax and interest still payable, and a requirement that the taxpayer has not already been contacted about the liability. Terms differ by state, so verify them on that state's own site.

Will filing my federal returns alert my old state?

It can. The IRS operates data exchange arrangements with state taxing authorities, and the information shared includes federal individual return information and audit results, disclosed under section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code. A state that believes you are one of its domiciliaries can match that data, find no state return and issue a notice or residency questionnaire. That contact may then disqualify you from the state's voluntary disclosure programme.

Does my state accept the foreign earned income exclusion?

It depends entirely on the state and the year. Each state writes its own code and decides whether to conform to federal provisions. Virginia gives the same treatment to income excluded under section 911. California has no equivalent exclusion and instead offers a statutory safe harbour for a 546-day employment-related absence, subject to day and investment income limits. Credits for foreign tax are even less uniform, so check the state position for each year.

State Tax Returns in an IRS Streamlined Filing

An IRS streamlined filing is a federal programme and nothing else: it repairs your position with the Internal Revenue Service and leaves your US state position exactly where it stood the day before you filed. There is no state amnesty inside it, no state penalty waiver, no state look-back concession and no state return built into the package. If the state you left still treats you as one of its residents, the three federal returns you submit under the streamlined route sit alongside a separate, unresolved and sometimes larger state exposure.

That is the failure mode we see most often when we take over a half-finished catch-up. The federal work is competent. Form 14653 reads well, the delinquent FBARs have gone through the BSA E-Filing System, and then a letter arrives from a state revenue department asking why a person it still regards as domiciled there has filed nothing since the year they moved to London. The state question should have been answered before the federal package was posted, because the answer changes both the sequence of the work and the options that remain open afterwards.

What an IRS streamlined filing actually covers

The Streamlined Filing Compliance Procedures are the Internal Revenue Service route for taxpayers whose failure to report foreign financial assets and pay the related tax was non-willful. The Streamlined Foreign Offshore Procedures, the track used by US citizens living in the United Kingdom, are set out at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/u-s-taxpayers-residing-outside-the-united-states. In outline, a qualifying filer submits the following.

Delinquent or amended federal income tax returns for the most recent three years for which the due date has passed, together with all required information returns such as Forms 3520, 5471 and 8938.
Delinquent Reports of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts for the most recent six years, filed electronically with FinCEN.
A signed Form 14653, the Certification by US Person Residing Outside of the United States, certifying eligibility, that the FBARs have been filed, and that the non-compliance was non-willful.
Full payment of the tax and interest due with the returns.

Filers who complete the process correctly receive relief from failure-to-file, failure-to-pay, accuracy-related, information return and FBAR penalties. Read the programme description at https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/streamlined-filing-compliance-procedures and one thing is conspicuous by its absence. There is no reference anywhere to a US state revenue department, to a state income tax return, or to state penalties. That is not an oversight. The IRS administers federal tax. It has no power to waive a New York penalty, shorten a Virginia look-back or forgive a California assessment, and Form 14653 makes no representation whatsoever to any state.

It is worth adding that the streamlined route does not produce a closing agreement even at federal level. The IRS states that returns submitted under the procedures are processed like any other return, are not acknowledged, and may still be selected for audit. So the mental model of a streamlined submission as a sealed settlement that ends the matter is wrong federally, and doubly wrong at state level.

Why you can still be a resident of a US state years after moving to the UK

State income tax residency is not the same concept as federal tax residency and it is not the same concept as UK residence. Most states tax on domicile. Domicile is the single place a person treats as their permanent home and intends to return to when absent. You acquire a domicile of origin, you keep it until you positively abandon it and acquire another, and physical departure alone does not abandon it. A state that taxes its domiciliaries taxes them on worldwide income, wherever they are living and however many years they have been gone.

Virginia states the position with unusual candour. Its residency guidance at https://www.tax.virginia.gov/residency-status explains that a domiciliary resident includes Virginians working abroad, and that such a person remains a domiciliary resident unless appropriate steps are taken to abandon Virginia as the state of domicile. The practical translation for an investment banker who moved from Richmond to Canary Wharf without doing anything deliberate about domicile is that Virginia has, on its own analysis, been entitled to a return from them every year since.

None of this is displaced by your UK position. Becoming UK resident under the statutory residence test described at https://www.gov.uk/tax-foreign-income/residence tells a US state nothing at all. Nor does the United States and United Kingdom double taxation treaty solve it: that treaty is an agreement between two national governments, the individual states are not parties to it, and a state is not obliged to give effect to its provisions in its own income tax code. A UK tax bill is therefore not automatically an answer to a state assessment, and a UK residence certificate is not a state exit document.

Domicile states and statutory residence states test two different things

States generally run two independent tests, and you are a resident if you fail either one. The first is domicile. The second is statutory residence, which is a mechanical test based on maintaining a home in the state plus a day count. New York is the clearest published example. Its definitions page at https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/file/pit_definitions.htm states that a New York State resident is an individual whose domicile is New York State, or who maintains a permanent place of abode in New York State for substantially all of the taxable year and spends 184 days or more in the state during the taxable year. Any part of a day counts as a day.

New York also publishes a defined escape route for domiciliaries abroad, often called the 548-day rule. Under it a New York domiciliary is treated as a nonresident where they were in a foreign country for at least 450 days during a period of 548 consecutive days, where the taxpayer, their spouse unless legally separated, and their minor children spent 90 days or less in New York State during that 548-day period, and where presence in New York during the nonresident portion of the year does not exceed the prescribed proportion of 90 days. Note the spouse and children condition carefully. A partner who kept the Manhattan apartment and the school run can defeat the test on their own.

California works differently again. Section 17014 of the California Revenue and Taxation Code, published at https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, defines a resident as every individual in the state for other than a temporary or transitory purpose, and every individual domiciled in the state who is outside the state for a temporary or transitory purpose. The statute then provides a safe harbour: an individual domiciled in California who is absent for an uninterrupted period of at least 546 consecutive days under an employment-related contract is treated as outside the state for other than a temporary or transitory purpose. Returns to California totalling not more than 45 days in a taxable year are disregarded.

For the readers we act for, the sting in that safe harbour is the intangible income limit. The provision does not apply to an individual with income from stocks, bonds, notes or other intangible personal property in excess of 200,000 dollars in any taxable year, and it does not apply where the principal purpose of the absence is to avoid tax. A founder or fund principal with a substantial portfolio can be posted to London for years on a genuine employment contract and still fall outside the safe harbour on investment income alone. That is precisely the profile of the person who most needs the streamlined route, and it is why a generic list of tips about driving licences is not adequate analysis.

The state residency checklist we run before any IRS streamlined filing goes out

The first gap in almost every published guide is that nobody sets out what a preparer actually gathers. Establishing whether a state filing obligation survived the move is an evidence exercise, and the evidence has to be assembled for each of the years the federal submission will cover, not just for today. These are the items we ask for.

Driving licence history: which state issued it, when it was last renewed, whether it was surrendered, and whether a UK licence was obtained and when.
Voter registration: whether the registration was cancelled, and whether any ballot was cast in the state after departure. An absentee ballot is one of the single most damaging facts in a domicile dispute.
Real property: what was owned in the state, whether it was sold, let on an arm's length lease or kept available for personal use, and the dates.
Housing in the UK: whether a home was bought or a long lease taken, since acquiring a permanent home abroad is the strongest single indicator of intent.
Family: where the spouse or partner and any minor children actually lived, and where the children were at school in each year.
Days present: a per-year count of days in the state, supported by flight records, card transactions and passport stamps rather than recollection.
Professional and business licences: state bar admission, medical or accountancy registration, real estate licences, and any state-level business registration or interest in a state entity.
Mailing and banking address: what address appeared on brokerage statements, Forms 1099, W-2s and K-1s in each year, because a state address on a federal information return is often what generates the notice.
Vehicles, club and association memberships, safe deposit boxes, storage units and pet or firearm registrations.
Employment documents: the assignment letter or employment contract, its start date and its stated duration, which is decisive for a safe harbour that depends on an employment-related contract.

The answer this evidence produces differs sharply depending on the type of state. In a domicile state the question is intent, and intent is proved by a preponderance of objective connections. No single item wins. A taxpayer who kept the family home, the driving licence and the voter registration will lose the argument even with a perfect day count, because the state is not counting days at all. In a statutory residence state the question is mechanical, and the day count and the existence of a permanent place of abode do most of the work. There, a precise, contemporaneous day log is worth more than any amount of narrative about intent.

The practical consequence is that the two types of state need different remedial strategies. Against a domicile state you are building a dossier that fixes a date of abandonment and shows a new permanent home established abroad. Against a statutory residence state you are reconstructing days and proving that a home was not maintained for substantially all of the year. Attempting the second argument against a domicile state is a common and expensive error.

Why the federal filing itself can surface the state exposure

A federal catch-up is not invisible to the states. The IRS runs formal data exchange arrangements with state taxing authorities, described at https://www.irs.gov/government-entities/governmental-liaisons/state-information-sharing. The information exchanged includes audit results, federal individual and business return information, and employment tax information. The Governmental Liaison Data Exchange Program operates under the authority of section 6103(d) of the Internal Revenue Code, which permits disclosure of federal tax information to states for tax administration purposes.

So the sequence that catches people out is straightforward. Three years of Forms 1040 arrive at the IRS bearing an address, a name and a social security number. Federal return data flows to the state under the exchange programme. The state matches the record against a taxpayer it believes is one of its domiciliaries, sees no state return for the year, and issues a notice or a residency questionnaire. Nothing improper has happened. The taxpayer has simply announced themselves to a creditor they had not addressed.

State voluntary disclosure is the only amnesty that exists at state level

There is no state equivalent of Form 14653 and no fifty-state programme. What most states operate instead is a voluntary disclosure agreement or voluntary disclosure programme, administered by that state's department of revenue or taxation. The design pattern is remarkably consistent across states, even though the detail is not, and you must verify the terms on your own state's revenue website rather than relying on a general description. The common features are these.

A limited look-back period, so that instead of an unlimited exposure for years in which no return was ever filed, the state agrees to assess only a defined recent window.
Waiver of civil penalties, with the underlying tax and statutory interest still payable in full.
In many states, protection from criminal referral for the disclosed liability.
A first contact disqualifier: the taxpayer must come forward before the department has contacted them, opened an audit, issued a nexus questionnaire or otherwise identified the liability.
An application that is often made on a no-name or anonymous basis initially, with identity disclosed once terms are agreed.
A requirement to remain compliant going forward, with the agreement voidable if later returns are not filed.

New York publishes its version at https://www.tax.ny.gov/enforcement/vold/. Under the New York State Voluntary Disclosure and Compliance Program, eligible taxpayers who owe back taxes and have not filed the related returns can avoid monetary penalties and possible criminal charges by disclosing what they owe and paying it. The tax itself remains payable, and eligibility turns on the disclosure being genuinely voluntary rather than a response to something the department has already found. New York also makes clear elsewhere in its guidance that changing domicile requires clear and convincing evidence of abandoning the old domicile and establishing a new one, and that registering to vote elsewhere is not by itself sufficient.

Sequencing: state clean-up before, alongside or after the federal submission

This is the second gap that nobody addresses, and it is the decision that determines how much the whole exercise costs. Once you accept that a federal filing can generate a state notice, and that a state voluntary disclosure programme typically requires that no contact has yet been made, the ordering of the work stops being administrative and becomes substantive. There are three options and each has a genuine trade-off.

State first. Determine the state position, and where a filing obligation clearly survived, open the state voluntary disclosure before the federal package goes out. This preserves eligibility while the door is certainly still open and fixes the state numbers early. The cost is time, and the risk is that a state disclosure requires figures derived from federal returns that have not yet been finalised, so amounts may need to be revised.
Alongside. Prepare the federal streamlined package and the state disclosure or delinquent state returns together, with the state submission going out first or on the same day. This is our usual approach for a clear-cut case. It keeps a single consistent set of numbers, avoids inconsistent residency positions between the two filings, and still gets the state application in ahead of any information exchange. The cost is a heavier front-loaded workload and a firm decision on the residency position before either filing goes out.
Federal first, state later. Occasionally justified where the state position is genuinely nil, for example where the client left a state with no personal income tax and never re-established a connection, or where the streamlined non-residency clock or a statute of limitations creates real federal urgency. The risk is explicit: if the federal filing triggers a state notice before the state application is lodged, the voluntary disclosure route may be lost and the client is left negotiating an assessment instead of agreeing terms.

Two points bind all three options together. First, the residency position you take at state level must be consistent with what the federal returns say about where you lived. A Form 2555 claiming a foreign tax home while a state return is filed as a full-year resident is a contradiction a residency auditor will find. Second, the streamlined federal package covers three years while a state look-back may be longer or shorter, so the two sets of returns will rarely align year for year. Decide deliberately which state years you are filing and why, and document the reasoning at the time.

State treatment of the foreign earned income exclusion and the foreign tax credit

A streamlined federal submission for a UK-based client usually shows little or no federal tax, because the foreign earned income exclusion, the foreign housing exclusion or the foreign tax credit absorbs the liability. It is a serious mistake to assume the state result follows. Each state writes its own income tax code and decides for itself whether and to what extent it conforms to the Internal Revenue Code. Some states conform, some conform to an older version, and some do not conform to the relevant provision at all.

Virginia, for example, states in its residency guidance that individuals qualifying for the federal foreign income exclusion under section 911 receive the same treatment on the Virginia return. California takes a different approach: its own statute contains no equivalent exclusion, and the relief it offers a Californian working abroad is the 546-day safe harbour in section 17014 rather than an exclusion computed on the return. The foreign tax credit is even less uniform. A number of states give no credit at all for income tax paid to a foreign country, on the basis that their credit provisions are written for tax paid to other US states. Do not assume the position; check it on the state revenue department's own site for each year in question, because conformity dates change.

The consequence for a catch-up is blunt. A client can owe nothing federally across three streamlined years and still owe real money to a single state for the same years, plus interest. In those cases the state liability is the reason the engagement exists, and the federal streamlined filing is the easy part.

Part-year and final-year state returns for the year you left

The year of departure needs its own treatment. If residency genuinely ended part way through the year, the correct filing is usually a part-year resident return that splits the year: income earned while a resident is taxed under resident rules, and income after that date is taxed only if it is sourced to the state. Virginia part-year residents file Form 760PY. New York nonresidents and part-year residents file Form IT-203. California nonresidents and part-year residents file the long form nonresident return. Each requires a stated date of change and an allocation of income either side of it.

That date is the single most consequential number in the state file, because it is the date you are asserting your domicile changed, and it must be supported by the evidence checklist above. It also has to be consistent with everything else: the date on the UK lease, the date the state driving licence was surrendered, the date the family arrived, and the residency dates implied by the federal returns. Where a departure year sits inside the three years of a streamlined submission, prepare the part-year state return and the federal return from the same underlying schedule of days and income so the two cannot contradict one another. Where the departure year is older than the streamlined window, you may still need to file it at state level to establish the break, even though no federal return for that year forms part of the package.

States with no personal income tax

For some clients this whole analysis is short. A handful of states impose no personal income tax on wages and investment income, so no annual resident return arises and there is nothing to catch up. Where a client's last US state was one of those, the streamlined submission really is the entire job. Two cautions apply even so. First, verify the current position for each year on that state's own revenue department site, because state legislatures change tax law and a state that levied no tax when you left may levy something now. Washington is the clean illustration: it has no personal income tax, but it does impose a capital gains excise tax on the sale or exchange of long-term capital assets allocated to Washington, with its own filing requirement, as set out at https://dor.wa.gov/taxes-rates/other-taxes/capital-gains-tax.

Second, a paper move to a no-tax state made shortly before departure to the UK is one of the most heavily challenged patterns in state residency work. If the previous state was a domicile state, the burden is on the taxpayer to show a genuine change of domicile, and a brief stay with limited connections rarely carries it. If that is your fact pattern, gather the evidence now rather than when the questionnaire arrives.

A worked scenario

The following is an illustration only, using assumed figures. A US citizen leaves New York in 2019 for a role in London. She keeps a Manhattan apartment, lets it out from 2021, keeps her New York driving licence until 2023 and votes absentee in one election. Her husband and school-age children join her in London in 2020. She has not filed a federal return since 2019 and holds UK bank and investment accounts well over the FBAR threshold. She now wants to use the streamlined foreign offshore route.

The federal analysis is straightforward. Three years of returns with Forms 8938 and 2555 or 1116 as appropriate, six years of FBARs, Form 14653. The state analysis is not. She was a New York domiciliary on departure. The 548-day rule requires that she, her spouse and her minor children spent 90 days or less in New York across the 548-day period, and the family remained in New York for part of 2020, which may defeat the test for the earliest window. The apartment was available for personal use until 2021. The absentee ballot is direct evidence of retained intent. On those facts New York has a credible argument that she remained a resident for several of the years in question, and the state liability, computed without a section 911 style exclusion, could exceed the federal liability entirely. The correct order of work is to establish a defensible date of change, decide which New York years must be filed, lodge the state voluntary disclosure application before the federal package is posted, and only then file the streamlined submission.

How we prepare a combined federal and state catch-up

We treat the state position as part of the scoping work on every streamlined engagement, not as an afterthought raised once the federal returns are signed. That means a residency determination for each year, an evidence file assembled at the outset, a decision on the state route and its sequencing recorded before anything is filed, and federal and state returns built from one consistent set of figures. Details of the federal work are at us-uktax.com/irs-streamlined-filing and us-uktax.com/streamlined-foreign-offshore-procedures, the wider US compliance service at us-uktax.com/us-tax-services, and the combined position at us-uktax.com/cross-border-tax-planning.

If you are preparing an IRS streamlined filing and have not yet answered the question of which US state, if any, still regards you as its resident, stop and answer it first. The federal programme is generous and well defined. The state exposure sitting behind it is neither, and it does not go away because the IRS has been satisfied.