State residency rules, domicile audits, exit taxes, and what moving between states does to your return.
Washington taxes an RSU vest at nothing, because it has no income tax. Utah taxes every tranche that vests after you arrive at 4.45%, on all of it, with no credit to claim because Washington never charged you anything to credit.
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New York's convenience-of-the-employer rule treats the days you work from your house in Utah as days worked in Manhattan. Utah taxes the same wages as resident income, and the credit that is supposed to fix that stops at 4.45%.
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Trading a 13.3% top rate for a flat 4.45% is the reason most people make this move. California still computes your rate on income it cannot tax, and still owns a share of every share you were granted there.
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Utah taxes the part of the year you were here, and the schedule that decides how much is TC-40B. The number most people get wrong is Column A, and the credit they expect to rescue them usually pays nothing.
Read postFederal law stops the state you left from taxing your deferred compensation, but only if the plan pays it out over at least 10 years. Take the same balance in one check and California can bill the whole thing.
Read postMassachusetts adds a 4% surtax on top of its 5% flat tax for every dollar of taxable income above $1,107,750 in 2026. A single big year, a business sale, or an equity vest can trigger it, and married couples can no longer file separately to dodge it.
Read postNew Jersey does not charge you a tax for leaving. It makes nonresident sellers prepay estimated income tax before the deed can be recorded, at 10.75% of the gain or 2% of the full sale price, whichever is more. The money is real, the refund is real too, and most sellers never learn the difference.
Read postYou can change your domicile to Florida, file the paperwork, and still owe New York tax on your worldwide income. Keep an apartment in Manhattan, cross 183 days, and the statutory residency rule makes you a full New York resident no matter where your home really is.
Read postMove from San Francisco to Austin before a liquidity event and the FTB may decide you never really left. Here is how a California FTB residency audit applies §17014 and the Bragg factors, and what is actually at stake on $4 million of RSU income.
Read postSenate Bill 5813 added a 9.9% second tier to Washington's capital gains excise tax, retroactive to January 1, 2025. Here's how it hits RSU appreciation, what's still exempt, and where the residency planning angles live.
Read postCalifornia taxes the portion of your RSU income tied to workdays in California from grant to vest, even after you've left. Here's how the trailing tax works on Form 540NR, the planning angles around a relocation, and what New York and Massachusetts do with similar rules.
Read postA change of domicile is a tax event, and the state you leave rarely lets go quietly. California, New York, and New Jersey test where you vote, register, and actually sleep, and they trail income like vested RSUs across the border. We map the residency change, time the sales around it, and document the record, so the move holds up if the old state asks.