Alimony in Pennsylvania.

The tax rule changed, and most guides still describe the old one

For a divorce or separation instrument executed after 31 December 2018, alimony is not deductible by the person paying it and not taxable to the person receiving it. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed the provisions that made it otherwise. For an instrument executed on or before that date the old treatment continues — deductible to the payer, taxable to the recipient — unless it is later modified and the modification expressly adopts the new rule.

This is not a detail. Under the old rule a higher-rate payer could transfer income to a lower-rate recipient and the two of them shared the saving. That saving no longer exists, which changes what a given number is worth to each side. New Hampshire wrote the point into its own statute: its 23 per cent figure assumes non-deductibility, and reverts to 30 per cent if the federal treatment is ever restored.

Pennsylvania is the exception that catches people, and it is not a small one. Pennsylvania’s income tax does not begin from your federal return at all. It taxes eight enumerated classes of income, and alimony is not one of them. The Department of Revenue lists alimony outright under “Income Items Never Taxable as PA Compensation.” Nor is there a deduction for alimony paid: Pennsylvania allows only a short enumerated list of deductions and “does not provide for a standard deduction or personal exemption,” and alimony is not on the list.

So alimony has never been taxable to the recipient or deductible to the payer in Pennsylvania, whatever the date on your instrument. There is no pre-2019 grandfather here, because Pennsylvania never adopted the federal rule the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act repealed — there was nothing for the TCJA to take away. If your agreement predates 2019 and you are deducting alimony on your federal return, that deduction does not carry to your PA-40. For an instrument executed after 2018 the federal and Pennsylvania answers happen to coincide, but they arrive there by different routes, which is why so much Pennsylvania divorce writing gets this wrong.

One more that costs real money: alimony still counts toward eligibility income for Pennsylvania’s Tax Forgiveness credit even though it is not taxable — so support that is taxed nowhere can still reduce or remove the credit. Four states do not conform their state income tax to it, in the other direction — Arkansas, California, New Jersey and New York — so this is worth knowing rather than assuming. The fifty-state table.
Source: Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, Personal Income Tax Guide, “Gross Compensation” (Income Items Never Taxable as PA Compensation: “Alimony”), “Brief Overview and Filing Requirements” (eight classes; no standard deduction or personal exemption) and “Tax Forgiveness” (eligibility income expressly includes alimony). Non-deductibility follows from Pennsylvania’s structure rather than from a sentence saying so; the PA-40 instruction PDF was serving an error page when this was checked on 15 Sep 2026, and we would rather say that than imply we read it. the state source Checked 15 Sep 2026.