This does not involve Kurt Russell. 
Instead this is a story regarding persons seeking to free themselves from the high-tax paradises of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland and, yes, even California!
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No, you are free to go, and leaving is not extremely difficult ā evading taxes is extremely difficult. If you donāt want to pay taxes to the state of your former residence, then move away, donāt pretend to move away.
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āPotential relocators are finding they canāt just buy a one-bedroom condo in South Beach, but leave behind a 20-room palace in Westchester County, or kids in a Manhattan private school.ā
Where is that āshocked faceā emoji?
There it is.
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Your new site caught my attention, shinobi.
Iām a native Californianā¦ I love my home, great weather, my children & gchildren live nearby. But, when I get my property tax bill, I go into shock & so many other pains especially political.
But leave, probably never!
Iāll tell you a story of a friend who is a fellow farmer. They packed up & bought a place in Arizona this year. They never sold their place here, but let their children move in. So my friend lived in Arizona over a year. They are back here now & so happy to be on the farm & in their old home. That great place in Arizona is now for sale.
I heartily endorse all of the high tax states doing everything thing they can to prevent fraud, and actually doing everything they can to keep their highly taxed residents.
I especially like the idea in Illinois of adding a statewide property tax to prop up their finances.
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If you havenāt already read it, and you like stories about people doing accounting, the New Yorker coverage of Julian Robertsonās extensive efforts to avoid the 183-day limit is pretty great: Tax Me If You Can | The New Yorker
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I guess this topic is evergreen. And here is the very latest installment of stories, once again courtesy of Bloomberg:
Bloombergās latest stories of escapes, some successful, others not
This topic, residence vs. domicile, has interested me for a great many years. Long ago I encountered personal issues related to this. The money involved was FAR less than the several amounts mentioned in this article. But it was a lot of money to me. I spent considerable time in various law libraries back then, well before the internet, reading up on this topic and trying hard to understand as many of the facets, ramifications, and requirements as I could. My study effort paid off, enabling me to avoid doing stupid stuff which could have led to significant expense.
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Another interesting readā¦ I love Bloombergās articles.
Care to share? What kinds of things did you do?
Not really. Even though it was long ago Iām still protective of the detail.
It was a situation where a move from one state to another was in the works and badly needed. Protection of assets, as things turned out after study of the law, demanded the move not be made. Exerted effort to maintain domicile in one state while actually residing in the other. Ended up saving roughly $50,000 in tax and a significant amount of legal expense, too; might not seem like a lot now but back then it was. It really can pay sometimes to know the law . . . . in detail.
Not asking for your life story, just the things you did to maintain domicile in one state and live in another.
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For me, back then, it involved voting registration, property ownership, good and active postal address (not just a PO Box), activity in the local newspaper, probāly other stuff which does not come readily to mind owing to passage of so much time.
Iām not really certain I could pull it off today. Reading those articles, seems like the state authorities might be more tuned in and more aggressive now than was the case āback in the dayā. It was a one time, āonce and doneā, thing for me. Glad Iāve no need now to try again.
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You know they could always reign in their spending and waste so they didnāt have taxes so high that this was an issue. Nah, thereās always something to blow other peopleās money on.
The stakes are high: The combined New York City and state taxes now are 12.7 percent, while Florida has no income tax or estate tax. The new federal tax law limits deductions for state and local taxes (known as SALT) to $10,000, making it even more costly for high-earners in high-tax states like New York.
If youāre a high earner in New York and you move to Florida, your chances of a residency audit are 100 percent," said Barry Horowitz, a partner at the WithumSmith+Brown accounting firm. āNew York has always been aggressive. But itās getting worse.ā
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Nice. In most states itās much easier to remain a domiciliary than change domicile, since the burden is generally on the party asserting a change in domicile. The reason for this is generally because the state wants to protect their revenues from people trying to leave, and they canāt have it both ways (i.e. assert the burden is always on the taxpayer, regardless of whether the taxpayer is arguing for change of domicile or the opposite). The stateās focus is normally trying to keep people who leave as domiciliaries. The reason being that they already have the second option of statutory residency for people who move in, but claim they never changed their domicile to the state theyāre actually living in.
Not to try to minimize your success, since no matter whether youāre arguing change of domicile or not, depending on the auditor you could have a painful experience. I will say that, despite the news articles, most auditors Iāve dealt with are very reasonable.
When you have the highest taxes in the country, get half your money from the increasingly disaffected top 1%, and are running a ballooning budget deficit, youāre only one recession away from bankruptcy.
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NYC has been a financial basket case before. Anyone else ever own any of those sweet MAC (Municipal Assistance Corporation) muni bonds āback in the dayā. Iām pretty sure I did. Never lost a dime and the interest rate was relatively high.