Domicile SD

I first changed my mailing address to SD and did that over the phone with Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls. That gave me time to make sure all the important snail mail address changes were made. I rented a post office box where I was living at the time and had AR forward my mail to the box. I guess I could have used general delivery but didn't think of it at the time.

About 3 months later I made the trip to SD and got my driver's license, voter registration, vehicles registered, and insurance for my vehicles. I had to change insurance companies because my, then current, insurance company didn't do business in SD. Once that was done I was a SD resident and 2 months later moved out of the house and put it on the market.

Since I owned my motor home before I started all of this I didn't get the opportunity to save on sales tax but had I been able to it would have been worth about 3% of the price of the motor home. I was able to stop paying state and local income taxes for the latter half of the year and that was pretty nice.

Are you both retiring at the same time? If one of you retire or leave employment when you purchase the MH that one could become a SD resident and register the MH while the other continues employment. Talk to a lawyer I pounded nails for a living.

We have been planning to full time for some time now (4 years), finally went to SD and took care of our driver's licenses in December, registered our TOAD but did not purchase our DP until March.

We did establish bank accounts in SD as well and started transferring deposits to our new bank. This took a couple of months. We are slowly dissolving our local account using it for some final payments. We plan to be full time by the end of this month after house is closed.

It does take some time and we have been pleased to be able not to feel too rushed with the process.

We were able to get our SD agent to take care of register our motorhome so we now have SD plates on both vehicles.

You are most likely stuck with your residence sales tax. The sales tax is paid immediately after purchase. You have to change your domicile to SD to register your vehicles there and get a drivers license there. You also have to have a mailing address in SD.

9 months is a long time to try to get out of paying sales tax in Iowa. If it's any consolation, the sales tax will be deductible when you do your 2013 income tax returns.