The rules for leaving California

Domicile, 'temporary or transitory purpose' and closest connections.

You are a California resident if you are present in California for other than a temporary or transitory purpose, or domiciled in California but outside it for a temporary or transitory purpose. A nonresident is anyone who is not a resident. Domicile is your true, fixed, permanent home; you have only one, it is presumed to continue until shown to have changed, and the burden of proving the change is on you — with actual residence in the new place and an intention to remain there permanently or indefinitely.

The underlying theory is that you are a resident of the place where you have the closest connections. The FTB weighs the factors from Appeal of Bragg: where your homes are and their size and value, where your spouse and children live and go to school, days in each state and why, where you file returns, bank, hold a driver's license, register vehicles and vote, where your doctors, dentists, attorneys and accountants are, where you work and own businesses, your memberships and your phone records. Formalities such as changing your voter registration are not controlling on their own.

Nine months presumes residency. Six months does not presume the opposite.

Under R&TC 17016 you are presumed a resident in any taxable year in which you spend, in aggregate, more than nine months in California. The reverse is not true: spending less than nine months creates no presumption of nonresidency, and you can be a resident without setting foot in the state. The separate six-month rule in the regulation only helps someone domiciled outside California, with a permanent abode there, who behaves as a seasonal visitor, tourist or guest while here.

One bright line exists for people leaving to work: under R&TC 17014(d) a California domiciliary absent for an uninterrupted period of at least 546 consecutive days under an employment-related contract is treated as outside the state for other than a temporary or transitory purpose. Return visits totaling no more than 45 days in a taxable year are disregarded. It does not apply if your intangible income exceeds $200,000 in any taxable year the contract is in effect, or if the principal purpose of the absence is to avoid tax. A spouse or RDP who accompanies you for at least 546 consecutive days is covered too.

The FTB will not tell you in advance whether you are a resident.

The FTB issues Chief Counsel Rulings on questions of law, but its own procedures say it will not rule where the answer depends principally on factual issues — and it gives 'whether a taxpayer is a resident for a particular year' as the example. There is no certificate of non-residency and no clearance letter. The first time the FTB tests your position is a residency audit, when it asks for calendars, travel records, credit-card and bank statements showing where transactions originated, phone records, licenses, registrations, property records, homeowner's-exemption filings, memberships and where your family lives. Your departure file is that package, assembled before anyone asks.

Form 540NR, with a residency questionnaire built in.

In the year you leave you file Form 540NR as a part-year resident: all income received while a resident, plus California-source income for the rest of the year. Schedule CA (540NR) Part I asks, on the return itself, where you were domiciled, the date you became a nonresident and your new state, the number of days you spent in California for any purpose, and the dates you owned a home or property in California. Columns A to E take your federal figures to a California-source total.

For a calendar-year filer the return and any balance are due April 15; California grants an automatic extension to file until October 15, but payment is still due April 15. If you are outside the United States on April 15 you have until June 15 to file and pay, with a further automatic extension to file until December 15.