@simplgy

I’ve been a Traveling Mailbox member for about a year. My last year’s tax return, all financial institutions, vehicle registration, and driver’s license all reflect this address.

It looks like an apartment address: 75 N Woodward Ave #####, Tallahassee FL.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been having problems.

1. I requested a voter registration renewal in Florida and it was denied on the grounds that I am using a business address
2. My bank (Ally) contacted me, saying that my address was a “maildrop” location, and needed to be a physical domicile.

My theory is that this Traveling Mailbox location has been flagged as a maildrop in whatever database these agencies use and will continue to be a problem, so I’m looking for a new strategy.

Questions:

• What am I supposed to do? I don’t have or want a permanent home.
• If these agencies object to my address, will the IRS or the California tax board? (audits? residency challenges?)

Some ideas:

• Use a “next of kin” address for legal reasons, and traveling mailbox as a mailing address. My bank allowed this. I think this means I need to declare residency in the state of my next-of-kin, which is not preferred.
• Find a smaller mail services provider that is less likely to be flagged as a business/maildrop location (They may be flagged later and I’ll have to change addresses. I’ll miss the digital scanned mail feature. Also, is any mail service legal to use as a residence now?)

@nickdanforth, you had this same problem in Apr 2015, any solutions work well for you?

@nomadicme, sounds like you’ve had the same problem, too.

What can we do about this, folks? Seems like as full-time travellers we should be able to pick any state in the US to be our residence, but banning certain types of addresses is really making it difficult.

I’m trying to decide which US state to set up residence in.

This is a complicated question. For one thing, deciding where you want to reside depends on things like:

• Income Tax (None in FL, TX, NV, WA, SD, TN (excpt dvnds)
• Sales Tax (especially for vehicles)
• Property Tax
• Health Insurance rules for those who aren’t in-state much

And requirements like:

• How long do you have to be in-state?
• How often do you have to renew Driver’s License and Registration?
• Can you get out of jury duty because you’re gone?

RVers have been doing this for a while:

And there are some new complications:

The Patriot Act now requires that financial institutions have a residential address on file for each of their customers, and it explicitly excludes the use of mail forwarding addresses for this purpose.

• http://www.technomadia.com/2014/09/money-banking-taxes-and-finances-for-the-full-time-traveler/

So I wanted to start a thread that gathers some good information on how people make this decision, problems they’ve had, and things they’ve learned.

For me it might make sense to stay in FL because it’s tax-free, I have the license already, and they have no in-state requirement. But I have no family or real address there if it’s ever required, and I don’t see myself owning land there because it’s too far from a major airport.

Nevada or TX makes sense if I’m going to buy some land and stay in the winters–both are by good airports and have strong tech communities.

Maybe folks want to contribute to a spreadsheet that has some of this data filled in? Or we can keep it in this thread?

For most of us that are earning right now, the short list is probably the states with no income tax, but there are other considerations and I want to make sure we know what we’re getting in to.

How have you all made this decision?