Forum Discussion
tatest
Mar 03, 2017Explorer II
It would be a great idea if you wanted to see the country but not visit or live in the major cities. Cost of a place to park, and plug in (boon-docking and connectivity are difficult to put together) is strongly connected to land values, making it problematic to RV in the most densely populated areas. To some extent this can be gotten around with choice of RV for stealth camping, i.e. if your RV can be disguised as a plumber's work van or something else expected to be parked on a city street, things go better in the city, but that works against you if you want to spend some time in a RV resort.
Get out of the major metropolitan areas into small town or even small city USA, where you have lower land values, cheap RV parks or public parks, but still enough population density to be on the 4G LTE network, it all becomes more feasible. $10 a day spot in city park in Coffeyville, Kansas works a lot better than trying to boondock a class A with towed vehicles in midtown Manhattan. There is a lot of variation in between, but the more likely it is that you can boondock, the less likely you'll have the connection you need.
Coming from a guy who loves to visit the big cities of the world, but has learned it is a whole lot easier to live where land values are less than 1/1000 of big city costs.
Things like financing, health insurance, domicile can all be worked out. Texas, Florida and South Dakota are popular domicile states for various reasons, income tax for some, and just making the paperwork easier for others. My brother domiciled in Michigan while living 8 months of the year in Florida, because Florida made it easier to be a long term visitor.
Recognize, that while you are working and earning an income, your residency and tax status may depend on where you physically are, and where is whoever is paying you, rather than your choice of domicile. This is coming from experience of living and working in China, domiciled citizen of a U.S. state, being payed by a corporation in an offshore tax haven wholly owned by a entity incorporated in yet another state. They all got a piece of me, and the tax returns were very complicated. This whole thing of roaming around the country is a lot less messy if all you are doing is drawing Social Security and your pension.
Another thought on this, I have a friend self-employed in online marketing and consulting for that business, who does almost all her work online except for live seminars all over the world. She doesn't RV, but lives (owns homes) in four different states and an off-shore tax haven. Two of the states can collect income tax from her, each by different rules. The other two don't, either because they don't have income tax or she doesn't spend enough continuous time there to be considered a resident and employed.
I've worked with other self-employed consultants who have worked around the world, but they all work through an agency. On paper the agency looks like the employer paying them, and they usually domicile in the same state. Most often it was Texas, a no income tax state, and a focus for our industry. Usually when out on a job, the state or country does not know they are there working, since they come in as temporary visitors e.g. business meeting.
Similarly as an employee of a global location I did short jobs at other locations in the U.S. and overseas. Most of the time I was still "working" at my home location, while "visiting" the place where I happened to be.
In both cases, the length of the job away from home was always less than a month, usually no more than a week. Within the U.S., for most states this is a short enough not to get caught up in the working resident trap that catches you on taxes, ID, and vehicle licensing.
You need to consider the meaning of your relationship with your employer, and whether any of these models can work for you.
Get out of the major metropolitan areas into small town or even small city USA, where you have lower land values, cheap RV parks or public parks, but still enough population density to be on the 4G LTE network, it all becomes more feasible. $10 a day spot in city park in Coffeyville, Kansas works a lot better than trying to boondock a class A with towed vehicles in midtown Manhattan. There is a lot of variation in between, but the more likely it is that you can boondock, the less likely you'll have the connection you need.
Coming from a guy who loves to visit the big cities of the world, but has learned it is a whole lot easier to live where land values are less than 1/1000 of big city costs.
Things like financing, health insurance, domicile can all be worked out. Texas, Florida and South Dakota are popular domicile states for various reasons, income tax for some, and just making the paperwork easier for others. My brother domiciled in Michigan while living 8 months of the year in Florida, because Florida made it easier to be a long term visitor.
Recognize, that while you are working and earning an income, your residency and tax status may depend on where you physically are, and where is whoever is paying you, rather than your choice of domicile. This is coming from experience of living and working in China, domiciled citizen of a U.S. state, being payed by a corporation in an offshore tax haven wholly owned by a entity incorporated in yet another state. They all got a piece of me, and the tax returns were very complicated. This whole thing of roaming around the country is a lot less messy if all you are doing is drawing Social Security and your pension.
Another thought on this, I have a friend self-employed in online marketing and consulting for that business, who does almost all her work online except for live seminars all over the world. She doesn't RV, but lives (owns homes) in four different states and an off-shore tax haven. Two of the states can collect income tax from her, each by different rules. The other two don't, either because they don't have income tax or she doesn't spend enough continuous time there to be considered a resident and employed.
I've worked with other self-employed consultants who have worked around the world, but they all work through an agency. On paper the agency looks like the employer paying them, and they usually domicile in the same state. Most often it was Texas, a no income tax state, and a focus for our industry. Usually when out on a job, the state or country does not know they are there working, since they come in as temporary visitors e.g. business meeting.
Similarly as an employee of a global location I did short jobs at other locations in the U.S. and overseas. Most of the time I was still "working" at my home location, while "visiting" the place where I happened to be.
In both cases, the length of the job away from home was always less than a month, usually no more than a week. Within the U.S., for most states this is a short enough not to get caught up in the working resident trap that catches you on taxes, ID, and vehicle licensing.
You need to consider the meaning of your relationship with your employer, and whether any of these models can work for you.
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