Domicile

[Barbaraok]

Originally Posted by Camper25

My truck and trailer insurance is so cheap.... why would I want to change my address to a state that's 3 or 4 times more.

I'd go on vacation for a year, then decide if I wanted to make any changes or not.

It is more than just insurance costs. A lot of people change so they don't have to pay state income taxes. For some of us with 401Ks (403Bs), other investments, this can be a not insignificant amount each year. Other states may have hired personal property taxes on RVs. And 'living' in a place familiar with full-time RVers has advantages in terms of ease of voting, renewing registrations/DL, being excused from jury duty, etc.

[Camper25]

My state income tax is so cheap I'm glad to pay it.

[Barbaraok]

Originally Posted by Camper25

My state income tax is so cheap I'm glad to pay it.

Great. Many aren't. I'm not sure why you feel so angry about where people decide to domicile while full timing? Nothing says you have to change, but a lot of people have found it to be easier for a lot of reasons to 'move' to a state with laws/regulations that make full timing easier. Often these are also tied to mail forwarding services. People often recommend firms that they have had positive experiences with and positive recommendations are not a bad thing,

[Sbarker105]

We recently sold our home in Ohio and moved into a rental in preparation for going full-time next October. We just purchased our RV through a private seller in NY and he is delivering it to us on Wednesday. We are looking at America's Mailbox to register our RV and then eventually use SD as our domicile. We both are currently working full-time and will be until we start our full-time RV adventure in October 2021. Has anyone used America's Mailbox to register their RV to help with the sales tax costs and then establish domicile at a later date? Are there any problems just registering the RV with SD without getting our SD licenses right away? I know they can do this but wanted to find someone who may have been in the same situation as we are now. Any insight would be most helpful! Thank you in advance.

[wjohnson913]

Originally Posted by Sbarker105

We recently sold our home in Ohio and moved into a rental in preparation for going full-time next October. We just purchased our RV through a private seller in NY and he is delivering it to us on Wednesday. We are looking at America's Mailbox to register our RV and then eventually use SD as our domicile. We both are currently working full-time and will be until we start our full-time RV adventure in October 2021. Has anyone used America's Mailbox to register their RV to help with the sales tax costs and then establish domicile at a later date? Are there any problems just registering the RV with SD without getting our SD licenses right away? I know they can do this but wanted to find someone who may have been in the same situation as we are now. Any insight would be most helpful! Thank you in advance.

Yep. We did. I was about a year a way from retirement and we made a trip to South Dakota to start the process. We decided to use America’s Mailbox as our mail forwarding company so that gave us a South Dakota address. We stayed at a campground a few days to get various things ready to retire. One night stay is all you need to do all the legal stuff.
We got our drivers licenses in about 15 minutes. We had our passports and other documents so are licenses meet the requirements for “real ID” so they are valid to board commercial aircraft.
We registered to vote and already have done that a couple times.
Americas Mailbox handled all the vehicle registration stuff. We signed power of attorney giving them the right to act in our behalf for the motorhome and Jeep registrations. We have a lien holder on the Jeep so they dealt with Chrysler financial to take care of whatever title stuff is needed. If you have no lien holder you can get the license plates the same day. We had to wait about a month to get the title stuff taken care of. They took care of everything and mailed us our plates. They calculate the fees and we gave them a check made out to the state or maybe it was the county and they took care of the rest.
South Dakota plate renewal is based on your last name so all my vehicles are due the same time but seeing how South Dakota fees are about 10-15% of what we were paying in California that was no big deal. No change in price for my auto insurance. Maybe down a few bucks but not enough to notice.
I think they even had voter registration stuff or we took care of that by mail.
Wills are even easy to do or change in South Dakota.
South Dakota makes it super easy, their fees but be a bit more than Texas or Florida’s but no annual vehicle inspection (I believe that’s a requirement in Texas but I may be wrong) so seems like a wash.
Sorry for the long winded response, tried to answer best I could.

[Sbarker105]

@wjohnson913 Thank you so much for all the great information. We aren't ready just yet to change everything over until we are retired and have stopped working here in Ohio. We wanted to just get the registration for the vehicles done and then later down the road, change everything over. Do you see that being a problem? Still having an Ohio driver's license with SD registered RV? Just curious if others have done this.

[docj]

Originally Posted by Sbarker105

@wjohnson913 Thank you so much for all the great information. We aren't ready just yet to change everything over until we are retired and have stopped working here in Ohio. We wanted to just get the registration for the vehicles done and then later down the road, change everything over. Do you see that being a problem? Still having an Ohio driver's license with SD registered RV? Just curious if others have done this.

What you want to do is the sort of thing that gets people in trouble. IMHO you would be violating Ohio law which probably states that vehicles being kept in the State by residents need to be registered in the State.

It would be somewhat different if you owned property in SD and, for example, has a second home there.

Getting SD licenses and vehicle registration is actually pretty easy. We did ours in a morning. It's not really something you need to do in advance.

Joel (AKA docj)

[radarboy]

Here's our scenario. We have a home in SC and a RV lot in Florida. We have SC DL's and vote here. Can we license our tailer which we keep in Florida most of time in that state? Our park has legitiment addresses and mail service. I don't think you need a DL to get plates in Florida. Wondering if anyone has thought about this? In SC we get hit with a property tax every year for the trailer. Last year $850. Any help,I'm listening.

[arcaguy]

Originally Posted by radarboy

Here's our scenario. We have a home in SC and a RV lot in Florida. We have SC DL's and vote here. Can we license our tailer which we keep in Florida most of time in that state? Our park has legitiment addresses and mail service. I don't think you need a DL to get plates in Florida. Wondering if anyone has thought about this? In SC we get hit with a property tax every year for the trailer. Last year $850. Any help,I'm listening.

You would need to check with the taxing folks in SC or a tax attorney or CPA. I'm pretty sure Florida won't have an issue taking your money but SC may have an issue with you not giving them theirs. Just so you are aware this may involve criminal penalties so you have to ask yourself if it is worth it. I took a quick look at the SC state web site and here's what it says regarding personal property tax:



"SECTION 12-37-210. Property which is taxable.

All real and personal property in this State, personal property of residents of this State which may be kept or used temporarily out of the State, with the intention of bringing it into the State, or which has been sent out of the State for sale and not yet sold, and all moneys, credits and investments in bonds, stocks, joint-stock companies or otherwise of persons resident in this State shall be subject to taxation."


The bold section above pretty much means that anything you own is subject to South Carolina personal property tax as you will have an extremely difficult time convincing the taxing authorities that you don't intend to bring the trailer back into South Carolina. There is likely case law or regulations that clarify this. As I said before talk to a tax attorney or a CPA in South Carolina for a better answer if you want one.

[travelorer99]

I found SD very easy to domicile at. Paid for everything but drivers license and carry permit to be done by the company.
I didn't have to go to Sioux Falls or the county to change drivers and carry. Went from place visiting in MN, to just over the boarder of SD, nice small town, did drivers LIC, and was supposed to stay a month to do carry permit, but small town, just went to sheriffs dept, was very pleasant and $10 and 15mns later, was all done, one nights stay. . All my redgs are done online, lic can be done online every other time. No state or emissions inspections.
That all being said. The health insurance loop holes, rules are getting harder. I cant have my currant this years SD place, next year, as they require a permanent adds. So I have a great out of pocket healthcare written by a lady in FL, but full time traveling policy is out of Texas. So I had to join Escapees out of Livingston TX to get a po box to have that insurance. So I have 2 po boxes now.
It really depends on which way one travels, as sooner or later, one has to go to said state to redo drivers lic. SD is a great state, as if one takes the advanced carry course, one gets 8 more states added. It was very easy to online vote redgister, and vote.