Most/many of us with legal domiciles in one of the states you mentioned are retired and only have pension, dividends, or interest income so no state income tax is important to us.

If you are gainfully employed you have to pay the taxes due in the state you earned it in. In some cases that can mean having to file several different state tax forms

In general you pay a sales/excise tax in the state where the vehicle is registered.

Some states like CA will tax you no matter where you actually live and dealers make arrangements to have it delivered to you out of state so you don't have to pay CA tax.

It is indeed a complicated topic, and there's a lot more to consider than just tax rates. A lot will be dependent upon what stage of life you're in and what things are important to your life - insurance rates, homeschooling laws (if you have kids), inheritance rules, business laws, etc.

Here's an article we wrote that goes over a lot of the considerations: www.technomadia.com/domicile

In general - if you work as an individual for a company that gives you a W-2 or 1099 in an income tax state, you will need to file state taxes there as well. We did a season working at Amazon in Kansas a few years back, and had to file KS taxes for that income. The state of your domicile may (or may not) also want to tax you for that income too, so be sure to check how they tax earned income outside of the state - it can vary quite a bit. We also check before taking a gig in a state how they would want to treat our earned income from other states.

Most of our income comes via our LLC, which is registered in FL (the same state as our domicile) - so we pay our federal self-employment taxes on our pass-thru profits from that company. Most of our work is done remotely as contractors, or via residual sales of our eProducts (books, apps, etc.). So thus most of our income is not from actually working for an employer in any particular state. We always check the regulations of a state we're in for any gotchas in terms of working in the state (even remotely), or limits on how long we can be there before we're considered a resident.

As far as paying sales tax on a vehicle - it varies. Some states make you pay sales tax regardless (like CA), but most others will exempt you from paying sales/excise tax if you're registering out of state. Always good to check before buying - we made the painful mistake once of shopping for a new tow truck in CA, and not discovering this gotcha until we got to signing the dotted line at the dealer.

- Cherie

It is confusing :)

First of all, Florida does not collect sales tax for the type of services we provide (consulting) - just goods. For our apps & eBooks, we sell those through vendors that handle collecting & paying the sales tax for us (Amazon, Apple, CreateSpace, Google, etc.). Other states differ, such as SD does collect sales tax on some services.

If we're working for a client no matter where we are or they are, they're paying our Florida based LLC. If we were working & staying a LOT in the state of our client while we're working for them, that could change the situation - but we avoid that scenario and limit our services to being primarily remotely done with only day or two onsite visits at most.

We are however careful to know our residency laws in states we are at longer term - for if they can claim us as residents, we could be liable for state taxes, registrations, etc. while parked there. One reason Florida made a heck of a lot of sense for our domicile and business registration, is that we tend to spend several months a year there anyway (both our families live there) - and it's usually the only state we spend more than 2 months at a time in.

And of course, always good to work with a law firm and/or accountant knowledgeable about this stuff. We have a great small business attorney in Florida, if you'd like a reference for helping you set it up.