Choosing your home state...
We are currently Florida residents who are going to go full time. I love Florida... Born here, raised here, lived here my whole life, but I've also paid taxes here. Florida is overall a pretty good ...
Forum Discussion
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.
