Choosing your home state...

Why class 8? There are Class 6 tractors (Durastar, M2 Business Class) that will get your GCWR into the 50,000 - 80,000 range, without taking GVWR over 26,000 that is often the trigger for commercial licensing. Are you anticipating pulling a 60,000 pound fiver?

Check Florida's rules about licensing medium duty trucks.

Here is where you'll find your answers for registering a Class 8 rig:

Escapees HDT forum

fla-gypsy wrote:
There is much more to consider than just sales tax.

gafidler wrote:
You do not need to have a SD drivers license to get plates for you vehicles and save the taxes just need a SD address with a mail forwarding company, you can get your drivers license later.

We're not just looking at sales tax guys... We're looking at the overall "total cost of ownership" so to speak. Sales Tax, Tag Fees, Income Tax, Personal Property Taxes, Rig insurance costs, health insurance, whether or not a Class 8 Rig can be registered as an RV or some other type of private coach -- not to avoid the Class A license, but to avoid having to keep logs and avoid having to pull into weigh stations and ag checks and not ending up in a conversation with DOT about IFTA.

There's a lot to the decision and it looks like Florida is one of the top three choices - and we're already legitimate Florida residents. The biggest stumbling block with Florida is the Class 8 Tractor should we decide to go that route. Avoiding sales tax on $100k is not a poke in the eye, but it's not the driver behind our final decision. As for registering the tractor as an RV in Florida, I guess we could register it by removing the 5th wheel for the visual inspection, but that's kinda cheating, isn't it?! Doubt we'd ever get caught, but you never know - and there's a specific statute in FL that deals with that - no Class 8 vehicles can be registered as RVs if they have a 5th wheel hitch on them. Dumb, but that's the rule, and it's part of what has me looking at other states.

I worry about the legitimacy of having SD, MT, or some other state's plates and a FL residency & DL. I could argue having legitimate reason for it since I want the private coach registration and FL doesn't recognize it, but it gives the appearance to Florida that you did it to evade taxes if they should ever look into it. And putting the RV in an LLC seems like it has its own problems too (many of which I mentioned above - an LLC is a company and a company must be doing commercial activities posits the entry level DOT guy - and then you're dealing with someone with a badge that doesn't really know the law) - not trying to hijack my own thread... The discussion here is about best overall state for full timers, but this is part of that discussion in our case since we may buy the Class 8.

You do not need to have a SD drivers license to get plates for you vehicles and save the taxes just need a SD address with a mail forwarding company, you can get your drivers license later.

There is much more to consider than just sales tax.

We used SD for many years. Insurance,both medical and vehicle was not an issue. We changed everything, including lawyer to SD. It worked very well for us, including driver licences, tho we had to give up the non com class A. They did not recognize it.

We found Idaho to be much more expensive for us than SD but we chose to make Idaho our final home state when we left the road and happily pay the price.

We flew in and became SD residents in Nov 2011, bought new coach in Mar 2012. Minn dealer gave us 30 day plates, took care of all paperwork, plates caught up with us. With the right forms, SD mail service can handle all paperwork also.

Old-Biscuit wrote:
South Dakota....
No state income tax
Low sales tax on new vehicle purchase
Low vehicle registration
Low insurance costs
No estate tax
RV friendly....easy to become 'resident'
......
After you set up your new home address you drive out to SD...spend one night at a CG and then go get drivers licenses, register to vote etc.

So, if we haven't bought our RV yet and want to take advantage of their low sales tax on new RV purchase, we probably need to fly in, stay in a KOA cabin or something, and register as residents... Then buy our RV... Or is there a way around that? Tell SD what we're up to and maybe they'd give us a temp plate to get the rig into their state??? Not sure how I'd handle that nuance...

Have any of you done any significant research into the state that creates the lowest overall cost for full time RVers? (Note that we are still working and will have decent income, so a state with a high income tax is a bad choice for us).

(

Escapees web pages are devoted to full timers and all the issues associated with full timing. They have lots of info on using MDT's and HDT's in support of RVing as well.

dahkota wrote:

edatlanta wrote:
Don't forget to check your medical insurance costs in the states you are considering. Costs vary a lot from state to state and this includes medicare supplements.

X2 - we were all set to make SD our new "home." Then we saw the health insurance offerings. As fulltimers not of medicare age, we need a multi-state PPO. It would have been cheaper to keep our COBRA insurance rather than get insurance through SD. We have also dismissed Nevada and are currently looking at Texas and Florida. We will probably keep our current residency for a year while the health insurance changes settle.

We are in the same boat. Need multi-state medical coverage with no medicare supplements. (We're only 40 and 39). Now, DW is going to be a travel nurse and may have the insurance covered for us, but that's still in the research phase too.

Thanks everyone for all your replies so far!