But you can never leave....
But you can never leave....
It’s risky just passing through California. A few years ago we were sailing from Washington to Hawaii and ducked into Eureka Harbor to shelter from bad weather. We were there for six weeks. They sent us a bill for property taxes on our boat, a USCG Documented vessel, registered home port in Honolulu.
I got out of CA in 2005 (to Washington), but have been back for the past 13 months dealing with the mother-in-law’s estate. Leasing the house in WA out for a second year while we sort this mess out in L.A. So far I’m still maintaining that I’m a WA resident... renewing my car stuff remotely, paying business taxes online in WA, and so on. We’ll see what happens.
I’ll pay my taxes for doing my time in this pit. Sure they’ll try an unconstitutional exit tax soon, but I’ll be long gone...
In organized crime, they call it a shakedown. In government, they call it paying your fair share. They’re essentially the same thing though, government and organized crime that is.
Well Prop 30 that just passed in Cali was retroactive
for the 2012 tax year
In 1952, my second-oldest brother, a California resident at the time, joined the Air Force, and was sent to Texas for training.
Got a Texas drivers license, and registered to vote in Texas; then was sent to England for most of the rest of his 20 years, except for some time in Italy & back in Texas for advanced training.
He mustered out in Texas, and bought a home there.
California then wanted 20 years of back taxes, interest, and penalties, because they still considered him a resident: since he had enlisted while a California resident, until he RETURNED to California post-service, then moved out of state AND then established residency elsewhere, he was STILL a California resident.
It took legal action, and a lot of time & headaches to straighten the mess out.
California wanted a pro-rata share of my retirement when I retired, if I changed residency, and had vesting—I did—BUT instead, I cashed it in when I took an out of state job & left California. The hit was cheaper than having them ding me every year the rest of my life.
California is a great place to be from—FAR from.
Bfl
I also had some experience in leaving California, although for me, it was easier, as I work for a big, bad, corporation (my only income), and they will report my residence-status to the state, based on the legal definition. So when I was finally able to leave, California would have had to take on my company, instead of me, to try to wring out more money.
But what drove me to leave in the first place, decades ago, even as a very young worker, was the fact that California had a field office in Las Vegas, where they hunted down retirees from California, that were getting pensions (and probably 401k/IRA disbursements), but no longer living in the state. If you lived in CA, it was clear, you would be taxed on that money - but if you worked 20 years in CA, then spent the next 10 years in another state, and retired in another state (Nevada, in that case), you worked 20 of your 30 years in CA, and CA wanted tax access to 20/30’s or two thirds of your retirement money (i.e., they expected you to pay California income tax on it, even through you did not live in CA at all). In other words, your employment in CA followed you to your death bed, anywhere in the country (and perhaps much of the world).
Their rationale was that you earned the above money tax-deferred from CA, so now they wanted to come back and retrieve that money. I understood them to be the only state in the country doing this stunt.
While I’m sure many of CA’s younger, capitalism-hating, government workers in Sacramento thought this was a really cute way to extract money from people that couldn’t vote, I doubt they considered the effect it did have on workers like myself. In my case, I saw that and concluded that I MUST LEAVE California as quickly as possible, and I did...for Texas, never to look back.
While there were many factors making me leave (cost of living, income tax, schools, crime, etc.), I was young and I knew that I could get away from all of that just by moving - but I could not get away from their tax people, that would scour the country (and maybe the world), looking for me, until my family could show them a partially decomposed body with my fingerprints still on it.
So they lost me and something on the order of $250,000 over the next several decades, in direct income taxes, sales taxes, and fees (like overpriced car registration), and probably at least as much indirectly (i.e., through money I would have otherwise spent there) - and that was all for what would be a small amount of retirement money, maybe $1,000 per year for 10 to 20 years. So they now get none of that.
I sure hope they’re proud of themselves.
California has declared that people in states bordering on California benefit from their location and are therefore semi-Californians and are subject to California taxes but at a slightly reduced rate.
From what I understand, professional athletes are taxed by the states that they play games in on a per game basis.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/apr/12/sports/sp-jock-tax12
I have been wondering when California is going to start to ask me to pay taxes on the money I earn when I am physically there working at my customer’s facilities - 3 weeks a year; or maybe even on the money I earn doing work at home for California companies - about %30 percent of my income.
I would have to increase my rates.
California required me to pay California taxes on ALL of my income, even though I never worked a day in California. They did, however allow me to subtract my Michigan taxes, which were much lower than the California taxes, so I only had to pay the difference. I tried a number of ways to fill out the forms, and all required this payment.
I finally fixed the problem by filing an individual return for her in California, and had them send the refund to Michigan, assuming that California would have no way of knowing she was married in Michigan. I then filed a joint return in Michigan, listing no income for her, assuming that Michigan would have no way of finding out she had income in California. Thank goodness the statute of limitations is now over so I won't get arrested for acknowledging this.
Interesting.
We have never before had feudalism in this country.
Government = Lord of the Manor. Citizens = serfs
You can check out, but you can NEVER leave?
Looks like a lane change project is coming to the ag inspection stops.