We asked every state the same question. Sixteen answered in writing.

Two answers, and the second is one no other department has given us.

“Vermont follows the Federal treatment of alimony. The Vermont tax return starts with the Federal AGI. Any allowable alimony paid and any alimony received would be reflected in the individual’s Federal adjusted gross income.”

“The Vermont Legislature sets conformity to the Internal Revenue Code as of December 31 each year. During the 2026 Vermont Legislative session, the legislature did retroactively approve conformity to some provisions of the BBBA.”

The first answer matches most states. The second is different, and it matters more. Vermont is a fixed-date conformity state rather than a rolling one. Utah’s statute points at the Internal Revenue Code “as amended”, so a federal change reaches Utah on its own. Vermont’s points at the Code as it stood on a particular 31 December, so a federal change reaches Vermont only when the legislature moves that date — a year at a time, sometimes retroactively, and, as the Department says here, sometimes only for some provisions.

For alimony this changes nothing today. The 2017 federal change sits long inside every conformity date Vermont has adopted, so the treatment is the federal one. It matters for whatever Congress changes next: if the federal rule on alimony moved, Vermont would not follow until its legislature said so, and there would be a window in which the two disagree. The Department publishes its own guidance on conformity to the H.R. 1 reconciliation bill here. The Vermont page has the detail.

One sentence, and it confirms what our Utah pages already said.

“For Utah tax purposes alimony is treated the same as it is treated for federal tax purposes.”

We had reached the same conclusion by reading Utah Code § 59-10-103, which defines Utah’s starting point by reference to the Internal Revenue Code as amended. That is rolling conformity, so a change to the federal treatment reaches Utah without the legislature acting. The Utah page has the detail.

The most precisely worked answer we have received. It does not simply say “we follow federal” — it names both modification statutes and says what is not in them.

“The starting point for the Arizona income tax computation for a full-year Arizona resident is the federal adjusted gross income (Arizona gross income). This amount is subject to certain additions (A.R.S. § 43-1021) and subtractions (A.R.S. § 43-1022) to arrive at Arizona taxable income. Neither of these statutes include a provision to adjust alimony payments made or received.”

This is the reasoning we had been doing ourselves, done by the people who would know. Our Arizona page reached the same conclusion by reading the same two sections and finding no alimony entry. The difference is that a reader can now check the Department rather than check us. The Arizona page has the detail.

Answered the same morning we wrote, and answered both questions — including the one about older instruments, which most replies leave alone.

“West Virginia follows federal tax rules, meaning alimony is not tax-deductible for the payer and not taxable income for the recipient for divorces finalized after December 31, 2018. For divorces finalized before 2019, payments remain tax deductible on state returns.”

One wording difference worth knowing, and it is not a disagreement. The Division says “divorces finalized”; the federal provision keys on the date the divorce or separation instrument was executed. For the great majority of people those are the same date and nothing turns on it. If yours are far apart — an agreement signed in one year and a decree entered in another — that is worth putting to your own accountant rather than settling from this page. The West Virginia page has the statutory detail.

The fastest answer we have had from anyone, and the first from a second round of letters sent the same morning. Two sentences, and they close the question completely.

“The Connecticut return begins with the Federal Adjusted Gross Income (FAGI) from the federal return on Line 1. There is no alimony-specific modification on the Connecticut income tax return.”

That is both halves of the question answered in one go: where the number starts, and that nothing in Connecticut moves it. It also converts what our page had been doing into something better. We had reached the same conclusion by reading the statute and the modification schedule and finding no alimony entry — correct reasoning, but reasoning. This is the Department saying it. The Connecticut page now quotes them rather than us.

The most consequential answer we received, on the state where the rule changed this year. We put two propositions to the Board and it marked each “Correct.”

“We do not conform to the federal Alimony changes effective January 1, 2019, through December 31, 2025.”

“On or after January 1, 2026, alimony and separate maintenance payments are not deductible by the payor spouse and are not included in income by the recipient spouse for… any divorce or separation instrument executed on or after January 1, 2026… [or] executed on or before December 31, 2025, and modified after that date, that expressly provides SB 711 (2025-2026) amendments apply to such modification.”

The trap is the word “expressly.” An older California agreement does not move to the new treatment merely by being modified. It moves only if the modification says so in terms. The California page has the detail.

The clearest statement of rolling conformity we received from anyone, in three steps. K.S.A. 79-32,109(a)(1) adopts the federal Code “as the same may be or become effective at any time, or from time to time.” K.S.A. 79-32,117(a) starts from federal adjusted gross income with specified modifications. And then:

“In the absence of a specific modification, items that are subject to federal tax will be subject to Kansas tax, and those items that are exempt from federal tax will be exempt from Kansas tax.”

There is no modification addressing alimony, so the federal answer is the Kansas answer automatically. A second officer in the same division added “I agree.”

Illinois is one of only two states whose administrative code we could not search at all — the General Assembly’s site serves a broken security certificate and no automated request completes. The Department answered the question the blocked source would have answered.

“IL does not have a separate publication dealing specifically with alimony. Instead, IL Revenue follows IRS treatment: if IRS taxes it, so does IL; if IRS doesn’t tax alimony, neither will IL.”

The mechanism they set out: if the payer cannot deduct, the payments stay inside federal adjusted gross income; if the recipient is not taxed federally, nothing is added back to Illinois net income. Illinois never touches the item, which is why no Illinois alimony publication exists to find.

We went back with a second question, and a different one — not what Illinois does with alimony, but how Illinois is attached to the federal Code at all. Does a federal change reach Illinois by itself, or does the General Assembly have to adopt it? The Division answered on 29 September 2026, and answered it hedged:

“As far as I know, the answer is rolling conformity.”

We are keeping the hedge, because it is the officer’s own and it is the most honest four words in the reply. The Division was equally plain about where an unhedged answer comes from: the only answer binding on Illinois Revenue is a private letter ruling from the Department’s legal department, Legal Services Office 5-500, 101 West Jefferson, Springfield, IL 62702, under the process at 2 Ill. Admin. Code 1200. An email reply is not that. It is still the first statement of the rolling-conformity point that comes from Illinois itself — until now we had it only from the statute, read on a commercial publisher’s site because the General Assembly’s own will not open.

The only department that volunteered the modification caveat without being asked.

“Whether alimony is taxable in Montana depends entirely on the date the divorce or separation agreement was finalized. Finalized BEFORE December 31, 2018 — alimony is taxable income for the recipient and tax-deductible for the payer (unless the agreement was later modified to explicitly change these tax terms). Finalized AFTER December 31, 2018 — alimony is not taxable for the recipient and not tax-deductible for the payer, following federal tax changes that Montana follows.”

A fixed conformity date, and a caveat they volunteered that matters more than the date itself. South Carolina conforms to the Internal Revenue Code as amended through 31 December 2024, except as otherwise provided; where adopted sections expired on that date and were extended but not otherwise amended during 2025, they are extended for South Carolina too.

“The state’s adoption of the Internal Revenue Code is not all inclusive. SC Code Section 12-6-50 includes the Internal Revenue Code sections not adopted by South Carolina.”

They pointed to the SC1040 instructions, the Schedule NR instructions and SC Information Letter #25-11. A fixed date means a later federal change does not reach South Carolina on its own.

Two sentences, both useful: yes, and the conformity date. The Department pointed us at Wisconsin Publication 109, page 19, and stated that except as specified Wisconsin currently follows the federal Code as amended to 31 December 2022.

Oregon answered twice. The first reply pointed us at the administrative rules and is the reason our Oregon error was caught within hours of publication. The second stated the position outright: Oregon allows a deduction for alimony paid if it is deductible federally, and the federal deduction flows through as part of federal adjusted gross income.

“Oregon’s tax treatment of alimony before and after the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 has conformed with the Internal Revenue Code.”

Minnesota follows the federal treatment and conformed to the 2017 change. The Department also answered a narrower question we raised about an old revenue notice, confirming that Revenue Notice #98-18 has not been archived but applied only to nonresident M1-NR returns for 1997 and amended filings for 1995 and 1996 — which confirmed rather than corrected what we had published.

The shortest answer we received, and complete.

“We follow the federal treatment of the taxability of alimony payments.”

We went back with the structural question — whether a federal change reaches North Dakota by itself. What came back is the most detailed answer on this page: not a conclusion but the statutory framework, four provisions of N.D.C.C. Title 57 Chapter 38, with what each one does. § 57-38-01(5) ties the Code reference to the 1986 Code “as amended”; (13) makes taxable income the federal figure plus or minus this chapter’s adjustments; (15) gives every term about income, deductions and exemptions “the same meaning as when used in a comparable context in the laws of the United States”; and § 57-38-30.3 starts the individual tax from a federal figure.

We read all four before publishing any of it, in the Legislative Branch’s own PDF of the chapter, and they say what the Department said they say. We also found a fifth the Department did not mention — § 57-38-01.1, the legislature’s declaration that it intends “adopting the federal definition of taxable income as the starting point”. One wording we did not adopt: the note describes § 57-38-30.3 as starting from federal adjusted gross income, where the section says a “federal taxable income figure”. We published the statute’s words and asked about the difference rather than correcting a state auditor silently.

Worth recording how this arrived. A first, shorter version of this answer was sent and then recalled. A recall does not travel between email systems, so we had it; we took it down from the site within the hour and wrote to ask what the Department wanted done. The answer was that a fuller version was coming, and this is it. We are noting that because the alternative — quietly keeping a message somebody tried to withdraw — is exactly the behavior that stops departments answering questions like ours.

Iowa answered with a mechanism rather than a rule, which turns out to be more useful. The Department pointed at the 2025 Iowa expanded instructions and explained that Schedule 1, on page 5 of the IA 1040, is where Iowa modifications to federal taxable income go — and amounts are entered only where the Iowa figure differs from the federal one.

If Iowa had its own alimony treatment there would be a Schedule 1 line for it. There is not. They added that Schedule 1 is not the place to adjust for income taxed by another jurisdiction — that is IA 126 or IA 130.

The answer that closed the last open state on our fifty-state alimony table. We could not retrieve a current statement from the state addressing alimony specifically, and we were not willing to infer it from a neighboring state or a secondary summary, so we wrote and asked.

“Maine conforms to the Internal Revenue Code, as amended, through December 31, 2025 unless otherwise stated in Maine law (income modifications, etc.). At this time, there are no specific Maine income modifications (additions or subtractions) for alimony; therefore, Maine currently conforms to the federal tax treatment.”

Read the date inside that answer. Maine’s conformity is fixed, not rolling: the Code as amended through 31 December 2025, set by P.L. 2025, c. 650, Pt. K. If Congress changes the federal treatment of alimony after that date, Maine does not follow automatically; it follows only when the Legislature moves the date. The Maine page has the detail.