Posted on 04/19/2014 9:19:32 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
Its getting tougher for Minnesotans to avoid the states taxes by spending part of the year somewhere else.
Snowbirds and high earners are discovering that they must do more than buy a condo in the Sun Belt and register a vehicle there, after a court decision last year reinforced the states ability to use any of more than two dozen criteria to determine who is a Minnesota resident.
People refer to it as Hotel Minnesota, said Matt Shea, a lawyer at Gray Plant Mooty. You can come any time you like, but you can never leave.
To determine tax residency, the state is looking at such things as where people vote, whether they mostly use Minnesota bank accounts and whether they go to the doctor here or in another state. Accountants and lawyers are advising clients who want to avoid Minnesota tax to sell local property and businesses if possible, and definitely to spend less time here than wherever they plan to claim as their new home state.
(Excerpt) Read more at startribune.com ...
I lived in California several decades ago. The state of California set up a FIELD OFFICE in Las Vegas. The purpose was to find California retirees in Nevada and make them pay California income tax, even though they no longer lived there. The claim was that they earned their pay in CA, had it tax-deferred income there, and therefore needed to pay taxes later, regardless of where they lived.
I was in my 20s, but I knew that it was time to skedaddle, and I went to Texas as fast as I could. One could argue that CA had a point, but I didn’t care to find out either way. If they had that attitude, I wanted NOTHING to do with them.
From my profile page:
...my FR "nom de guerre" is a play on the official nickname of Massachusetts (The Bay State) and the recent decision by the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court,Margaret Marshall (a South African who's married to that Fellow Traveler at the NY Times,Anthony Lewis) that homosexual marriage is guaranteed by our Constitution...thus,"Gay State Conservative".
Its even worse if you are an expat...if you spend 38 days in the US its as if you spent the whole year here. Thus all your income earned abroad is subject to US income taxes.
ThwnK you.
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