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Comment by gamblor956 | Hacker News Reader

This is a misunderstanding of how CA tax law works.

If you move to say, Nevada, before moving to China or wherever, but you always intended to return to CA afterwards, then for state tax purposes you never stopped being a CA resident. So, for example, if you keep a storage locker with your furniture in Cupertino for when you return, you clearly never intended to permanently leave and so you're still a CA resident for tax purposes.

If you don't plan on coming back to CA after moving to China or wherever, you stop being a CA resident immediately and only owe state taxes for the part of the year you still lived in CA. And it's easy to show that you are no longer a CA resident, for example, by selling all of your CA-based property.

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If you own a house in California and visit it often, even if you are living in China, they might still claim you are on the hook for California taxes. I guess you really have to move out and then rent the house out or sell it to be off the hook.

The biggest issue with CA and moving abroad temporarily is that CA doesn't have a foreign earned income exclusion or foreign tax credit. So you really don't want to be a CA resident if you need to move out of the USA.

Since I moved to Switzerland (and then China, ironically enough) from CA, it was something I had to look into...I wasn't sure if they would come back and say I was a CA resident even though I really had no ties there. In particular, if I wanted to vote, I could have in CA, but that would have been a bad mistake. On the other hand, I wasn't eligible to vote in any other state, so I spent 11 years not voting. When I finally left China, it was for a job in CA...which also gave me some pause as I didn't intend to return to CA in the first place.

Thanks. It's too bad people decided to downvote me. Probably because of my username, but who knows. In any event, do you have thoughts on solutions?

Claim that your permanent residence to Washington state (or some other income-tax free state) if you go abroad. Actually, make it so by moving to WA first, and then going abroad. Also, not all states are like CA, some do support foreign tax credits at least.

I hadn't looked but tbf that's a pretty shit username.

In my experience, California still tries to claim tax residency based on owning a house there (on the basis that it is not a rental in this case), despite moving out of State a decade prior and visiting infrequently. It doesn't matter if you own a house, have a job, and all the other accoutrements of a life in another State, they'll still harass you about paying income tax. Even if you are staying in the country but in another State, it still might be a good idea to dispose of all CA-based property.

When it comes to taxes, California has a serious stalker vibe.

Obviously I was talking about the situation where one doesn't want to sell all property in CA and wants to be able to return to CA from time to time, maybe for months at a time.

Anyway, our current thinking is to establish residence in Nevada (probably in Tahoe) and then go to Europe from there. Thanks for the downvotes.

If you're returning for "months at a time", they'll probably still hit you with a tax bill. Not a tax lawyer, though, so take it for what it's worth.

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