Community Forums

wahlfamily · 04-15-2008, 01:24 AM

How do the full timers who are retired military handle your state of residence? We're retiring in July and our state of residence is NV. We want to keep that state, but we have no address there. Any suggestions on necessary steps to maintain the residence, or does our state of residence for the military continue after retirement? Thanks!

Mary Claire Wahl, CNM USAF
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany

wahlfamily · 04-15-2008, 01:24 AM

How do the full timers who are retired military handle your state of residence? We're retiring in July and our state of residence is NV. We want to keep that state, but we have no address there. Any suggestions on necessary steps to maintain the residence, or does our state of residence for the military continue after retirement? Thanks!

Mary Claire Wahl, CNM USAF
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany

Ray,IN · 04-15-2008, 05:28 PM

Will you use a mail-forwarding address in NV? That should suffice for residency. Have this question linked to the full-timers board for more exposure.

Kablewizard · 04-15-2008, 06:52 PM

Wow, thats a pretty loaded question. If you are talking military residence only, it will stay NV until you change it in your file. When you retire that is where you should be returned to. If you did not join from NV, you need to be sure that its correct in your records.

If you are talking after retirement, I believe as lond as you plates / registration, and your DL are from NV your ok there. But by law if you work camp in a differant state and get paid there you are required to file state tax there. I am sure if I am wrong on the last part someone will correct me.

Also I have linked this to the full timers area for more input on the other side of the military life.

wahlfamily · 04-15-2008, 10:00 PM

To the above two, thanks for the info and thanks for the link to the Full Timers section. I'll go check that area.

AFChap · 04-16-2008, 06:59 AM

Welcome Mary, and congrats on reaching retirement time from the AF!!

As far as "home of record"/residency state is concerned, the is a slight difference in what happens when you retire from the military vs leaving the military without retiring. Basically, when you retire you do not have to return to the residency state in military records. Whatever the destination you claim in your final PCS travel voucher, that is the maximum mileage the military will pay for your final PCS shipment. But that doesn't affect residency. If you have been a resident of NV all along, and you have NV license, vehicle registration and voting registration, that will continue unless you take deliberate steps to change that. Using a mail forwarding service in Texas or Florida or somewhere else will not affect your state of residency.

In our case, we were AL residents. The year before I retired, we changed vehicle registration & voting registration to TX. Our final travel voucher was filed almost 4 mo after the retirement ceremony with a TX location as the destination. 11 mo after retirement we had our storage shipment delivered to an AL address where our children are ... any location is fine as long as it does not exceed the distance to the location on the final travel voucher. But that DOES NOT AFFECT your residency in another state.

My brother was a TX resident and decided to stay in VA after he retired. There was no PCS travel voucher or shipment for him. Within 30 days of retirement, the state of VA contacted him telling him he must immediately register his vehicles in VA and get VA driver's license.

There are varying interpretations in some states, but vehicle registration, voting registration, filing state income tax if the state has that, owning property, and other affiliations/memberships is normally considered "intent" as far as establishing residency. Other than voter registration, no one of those necessarily makes you a resident of that state, but rolled up together they do show "intent." And if you work/earn income in a different state, you need to be prepared to be challenged for "proof" of your residency.

Hope that isn't too confusing!

wahlfamily · 04-16-2008, 11:35 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by AFChap:
Welcome Mary, and congrats on reaching retirement time from the AF!!

As far as "home of record"/residency state is concerned, the is a slight difference in what happens when you retire from the military vs leaving the military without retiring. Basically, when you retire you do not have to return to the residency state in military records. Whatever the destination you claim in your final PCS travel voucher, that is the maximum mileage the military will pay for your final PCS shipment. But that doesn't affect residency. If you have been a resident of NV all along, and you have NV license, vehicle registration and voting registration, that will continue unless you take deliberate steps to change that. Using a mail forwarding service in Texas or Florida or somewhere else will not affect your state of residency.

In our case, we were AL residents. The year before I retired, we changed vehicle registration & voting registration to TX. Our final travel voucher was filed almost 4 mo after the retirement ceremony with a TX location as the destination. 11 mo after retirement we had our storage shipment delivered to an AL address where our children are ... any location is fine as long as it does not exceed the distance to the location on the final travel voucher. But that DOES NOT AFFECT your residency in another state.

My brother was a TX resident and decided to stay in VA after he retired. There was no PCS travel voucher or shipment for him. Within 30 days of retirement, the state of VA contacted him telling him he must immediately register his vehicles in VA and get VA driver's license.

There are varying interpretations in some states, but vehicle registration, voting registration, filing state income tax if the state has that, owning property, and other affiliations/memberships is normally considered "intent" as far as establishing residency. Other than voter registration, no one of those necessarily makes you a resident of that state, but rolled up together they do show "intent." And if you work/earn income in a different state, you need to be prepared to be challenged for "proof" of your residency.

Hope that isn't too confusing! </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thanks, that makes sense. We do have voter's registration in NV and our driver's license is from NV. The car registration is overseas, so we have to take care of that when we return. How does a state handle that if we have no local registration due to being in an RV? Do DMVs accept PO boxes?

Stanbnv · 04-17-2008, 12:22 PM

NV doesn't care, (at least they didn't two years ago) if you use a mail forwarder like UPS or Postage Plus as an address. We "moved" to WA two years ago, and had to use the RV park we were staying at as WA doesn't accept them. WA was $700 cheaper for the truck licence and over $600 cheaper for the 5er than NV though which is why we switched. It didn't hurt that we "moved" back to the small town I grew up in though.

wahlfamily · 04-18-2008, 01:19 AM

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Stanbnv:
NV doesn't care, (at least they didn't two years ago) if you use a mail forwarder like UPS or Postage Plus as an address. We "moved" to WA two years ago, and had to use the RV park we were staying at as WA doesn't accept them. WA was $700 cheaper for the truck licence and over $600 cheaper for the 5er than NV though which is why we switched. It didn't hurt that we "moved" back to the small town I grew up in though. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That's quite a price difference for the license between NV and WA! Is there a summary of the state licensing fees that has the cost differentials? We have no ties to NV other than the lack of state tax. But WA doesn't have a state tax either, so we could just as easily declare them out home state.

LindaH · 04-18-2008, 06:53 AM

There are mail forwarding services in Nevada that will give you a *real* street address, not a PO box. If you Google "Nevada mailing services," you'll come up with several mail forwarders in the state. And then, of course, there's always the UPS Stores.

Stanbnv · 04-18-2008, 06:58 AM

I was able to find what NV would have charged me for the truck on their DMV site, and I recieved the licence renewal for the 5er after I had registered it in WA. The sales tax is kind of a wash as the county I was in in NV (Churchill) was 7% and Klickitat in WA is 7.5%. I did have to pay about $200 the first year on the trailer as WA charges the difference in sales tax, no matter how long you have had the vehicle. WA is kind of a stickler on residency, being next to Oregon with no sales tax, and I understand some of the counties over on the wet side have instituted higher taxes of some kind on licences. The states vehicle licences were outrageous so a few years ago, there was a ballot inititive to lower licences to $36. They have found a way to tax you more on pick-ups, for tonnage, that is why the truck is $90 instead of $36.

John Harrelson · 04-18-2008, 08:10 AM

I lived in Spokane Washington for a couple of years and loved it.... EXCEPT ....

EXCEPT.... for their dumb law concerning
"Slide-In Truck Campers"..

Washington DMV laws make you register and get a "License Plate" for the slide-in camper...

YEP ... that's right... If you have a slide-in camper , you must register it ... get a metal license plate just like the one on the truck ....
and the plate must be attached to the camper and visible from behind, so the cops can see it....

So I ended driving down the highway with TWO license plates on the back of my truck...
In my opinion,some laws are just plain Dumb...

Thank goodness for Nevada and our "Sensible" laws...

John

AFChap · 04-18-2008, 02:46 PM

Mary & Tom

Many, many fulltimers establish residency in Texas, South Dakota or Florida for most of the reasons discussed. There are mail forwarding services in each state, most notably are Escapees in Texas and Good Sam in Florida The Escapees website even provides info on "How to Become a Texan."

We registered our vehicles in Polk County Texas (where Escapees HQ is located), registered to vote there, and got our mail service address set up and working about 6 mo. before I retired from the Air Force ... ALL OF THOSE through the mail. Just before retirement, we had household goods shipped to three children's homes (one dity move and one professional move with two delivery locations). Three months after retirement, we did our retirement travel to our new address in Texas, got the vehicles inspected, and got our Texas driver's licenses.

TX does have a 6.5% sales tax on vehicles just purchased, payable with the first registration. If the vehicle has been registered in another state, there is just a one-time new resident fee of $90 plus the normal registration fees.

Stanbnv · 04-19-2008, 08:28 AM

South Dakota does seem to be the up and coming state of choice for full timers, with Texas either ahead or close beind. Texas is popular partly because of Escapees, but there are several places in SD that will set you up too. The weather in winter is much better in TX, for those that think they might want to settle. That said, WA works for me, and I have no reason or intention of changing any time soon. When or if I get to old or infirm to go south in winter and north in summer, I will try to find a nice condo on a golf course somewhere where the weather is nice year around.

Several states don't tax military retirement or SS and while there is a list somewhere, the only one that comes to mind right now is HI. I know this as I have a couple of old buddies that retired there. HI would, however, be kind of hard to full time from.