312
Opinion of the Court
of Residents and Nonresidents Under the Privileges and Immunities Clause, 13 State Tax Notes 245, 249 (1997)). A similar effect is achieved in the case of marital dissolution by allowing the payer of alimony to exclude the payment from income and requiring the recipient to report a corresponding increase in income. Such treatment accords with provisions adopted in 1942 by the Federal Government as a means of adjusting tax burdens on alimony payers who, without a deduction for alimony paid, could face a tax liability greater than their remaining income after payment of alimony. See Committee Report, Revenue Act of 1942, 1942-2 C. B. 409.
In the federal system, when one resident taxpayer pays alimony to another, the payer's alimony deduction is offset by the alimony income reported by the recipient, leading to parity in the allocation of the overall tax burden. Section 631(b)(6), however, disallows nonresidents' entire alimony expenses with no consideration given to whether New York income tax will be paid by the recipients. Respondents explain that such concerns are simply irrelevant to New York's taxation of nonresidents, because "[e]xtending the benefit of income splitting to nonresidents is inappropriate on tax policy grounds because nonresidents are taxed by New York on only a slice of their income—that derived from New York sources." Brief for Respondent Commissioner of Taxation and Finance 15. Such analysis, however, begs the question whether there is a substantial reason for the difference in treatment, and is therefore not appreciably distinct from the State's assertion that no such justification is required because § 631(b)(6) does not concern business expenses.
Indeed, we fail to see how New York's disregard for the residence of the alimony recipient does anything more than point out potential inequities in the operation of § 631(b)(6). Certainly, the concept of income splitting works when both former spouses are residents of the
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