Florida domicile

[Campnfools]

I have heard that you can claim Florida as your domicile if you are one the rv journey of life. I've heard there is a way to do this in a few places in Florida. Can anyone shed more light on this subject?

[lnickell50]

One is St.Brendans Isle in Green Cove Springs,FL

[Billfish636]

I wanted more information on this subject. For example:

Changing State Residency - A Guide for the RV Owner

I found this definition for Residence versus Domicile:

"The difference between the two was explained well by the State of New York Court of Appeals:

Residence means living in a particular locality, but domicile means living in that locality with intent to make it a fixed and permanent home. Residence simply requires bodily presence as an inhabitant in a given place, while domicile requires bodily presence in that place and also an intention to make it one's domicile."



I am somewhat familiar with this. In the Florida county where I live my wife and I each went down to the Courthouse and filled out and filed with the Clerk of the Court an Affidavit of Domicile.

[Selah]

https://www.sbimailservice.com

[95B20V5]

We were all set to do the same thing until we got insurance quotes on rig and toad..over twice what we pay in Tennessee . This doesn’t cost of tags vs Tennessee which is $52 for both rig and toad per year.
Needless to say we stayed Tennessee residents.

[lnickell50]

We were going to do the same thing. I called my insurance company and asked what it would be for Florida and South Dakota. Both were double what we pay for Ohio. Found out ups does mail forwarding with a legal street address .

[Gary RVRoamer]

Vehicle insurance rates in Florida vary hugely based on county. Any address in one of the metro areas, e.g. Ft Lauderdale or Tampa, is going to be sky high, while the hinterlands are moderate.

You can establish domicile in Florida by registering your vehicles there, obtaining FL driver license, and basing your mail service there (i.e. a local address). These are all prima facie evidence that you have chosen FL as your domicile. Your insurer, however, doesn't care where your domicile is - he only cares where the vehicle is "principally garaged", even if you are a fulltimer and never "garage" it.

[wnytaxman]

It is not as simple as just going to the Courthouse and saying you are a resident. If you live in another state and have a residence in that state, vote there, have your driver's licenses there, then that state is your resident state.

We have gone through residency audits with NY State on more than one occasion. It is a time consuming and expensive proposition. If you are going to move to Florida that is different than just trying to claim Florida residency. One of the residency audits for our client took over two years to resolve and we finally won by producting two years of cell phone records showing which tower he used to make his cell phone calls.

Where do you spend 183 days or more? That is the first issue that you need to cover. If you spend more than 183 days in another state, the odds are pretty good that is your state of residency. If you are moving to Florida then you must make sure that you document your move in detail. Remember the burden of proof is on the taxpayer, not the state.

[RV Vagabond]

Will the Florida driver license office accept an RV park rent receipt as proof of residency?

[Billfish636]

No. look up requirements for Florida Drivers License on line.

[Gary RVRoamer]

Most people miss the main point of "claiming domicile" somewhere. It's only important if you are seeking to avoid the legal ramifications of residency/domicile in another state. If that other state insists on taxing you or requiring their DL or whatever, you may need to convince them you have "domicile" elsewhere.

You actually can go to a Florida courthouse and file a form called Florida Declaration of Domicile, but it doesn't mean a damn thing if the other state doesn't buy into it. If the preponderance of your legal connections (voting, DL, vehicle tags, etc) are still in some other state, claiming domicile in Florida (or elsewhere) will be largely ignored. You are probably still subject to taxation and such in that state. Therefore the real question for most people is how to sever connections with their previous state of domicile and/or residence.

Each situation is different because most everybody has some at least some ties with another state, e.g. property, mailing address, banking, licenses, doctors, etc. There may be reasons to keep some or all of those ties, and filing paperwork in another state doesn't necessarily change them. However, if you can and wish to move those ties elsewhere you can usually do so, and you need not worry about a legal concept called "domicile" to do so.

So, campnfools, what are you trying to achieve by adopting Florida as your legal home? Florida law recognizes that many people are only part time Floridians and has ways to accommodate those people for DL and vehicle tags, but you still have to do more than sign a form.

[Triker56]

Originally Posted by lnickell50

We were going to do the same thing. I called my insurance company and asked what it would be for Florida and South Dakota. Both were double what we pay for Ohio. Found out ups does mail forwarding with a legal street address .

Ohio collects income taxes from its residents at the following rates: 0.495% on the first $5,200 of taxable income. 0.990% on taxable income between $5,201 and $10,400. 1.980% on taxable income between $10,401 and $15,650.

Florida income taxes are 0%

Tennessee , taxes only dividend and interest income. If you do not have this type of income you are not required to file a state return.

[jbrv]

We were florida residents when we decided to go full time. We had some problems but worked through the.

One problem is once we sold our home we had no address in florida to use for DL, vehicle registrations and such. So, we thought we fixed all that once we started using the mailing service in green cove springs. We took a piece of mail that was sent to us at that addy and managed to update the DL and vehicle registrations to use that mailing address. We found out later that does not make us domiciled or residents of that county. We found out when we went to change our voter registration to the addy for green cove springs which matched our DL. We also needed to file paperwork with the county (this is listed on the st brendan isle website, i failed to see it)

This may not work for everyone but it worked for us.
set up mail forwarding....we use SBI.
Change everything to use that addresse to send you mail. Examles of mail needed from the fl dl webpage....
Rental Agreement
Vehicle/Vessel Registration
Utility Bills
Bank Statements <---------- this is the one that worked for us
Voter Registration Card
then once you have mail (again bank statement was what worked for us) sent to you using that addy you should be able to then get a fl dl with that addy and register the vehicles using that addy. I am pretty sure you must do it in person at a dl office not online. We did ours in a tampa office but used the clay county near jaxsonville addy, tampa dl people did not care it was some other county as long as we had all the proper documents. Oh and they care about ID documents, Make sure you bring the proper documentation to verify you are who you say you are.
somewhere after setting up the mailing service you should file the proper documents with the county (in sbi case it is clay county)
You can then also then register to vote.

I think that makes us all legal like. We are clear with anyone who ask that it is a mailing address and we do not have a full time residental addy.

Should note we own no property in any state and have no ties to any state except Florida. No state would be able to claim in anyway that we are a resident there (like own property, spend a large amount of time (over 5 months a year), have bank accounts, rental property, and all sorts of other things some states look for to indicate someone is really a resident of that state but claiming some other location to avoid or minimize taxes and fees.

[Gary RVRoamer]

The Florida Declaration of Domicile is used when a person has a legal presence in multiple states, e.g. a summer home "up North" and a winter home in Florida. It's sort of a tie-breaker, stating that your intent is that the Florida presence take priority over other possibilities and be considered your legal home. Domicile location comes into play for things like probating a will but doesn't have a lot of meaning otherwise. However, making a formal declaration of domicile is an additional piece of evidence if there is some question of which state's laws should prevail. For that reason it may be useful to military people, mariners, itinerant workers, people who live/work primarily overseas, and yes, fulltime Rvers. Florida has a lot of those people, so the bureaucracy is accustomed to handling their needs, but other states may not be so friendly.