[seanmcdirmid]

If you own a house in California and visit it often, even if you are living in China, they might still claim you are on the hook for California taxes. I guess you really have to move out and then rent the house out or sell it to be off the hook.

The biggest issue with CA and moving abroad temporarily is that CA doesn't have a foreign earned income exclusion or foreign tax credit. So you really don't want to be a CA resident if you need to move out of the USA.

Since I moved to Switzerland (and then China, ironically enough) from CA, it was something I had to look into...I wasn't sure if they would come back and say I was a CA resident even though I really had no ties there. In particular, if I wanted to vote, I could have in CA, but that would have been a bad mistake. On the other hand, I wasn't eligible to vote in any other state, so I spent 11 years not voting. When I finally left China, it was for a job in CA...which also gave me some pause as I didn't intend to return to CA in the first place.

[tardo99]

Thanks. It's too bad people decided to downvote me. Probably because of my username, but who knows. In any event, do you have thoughts on solutions?

[seanmcdirmid]

Claim that your permanent residence to Washington state (or some other income-tax free state) if you go abroad. Actually, make it so by moving to WA first, and then going abroad. Also, not all states are like CA, some do support foreign tax credits at least.

[whatsmyusername]

I hadn't looked but tbf that's a pretty shit username.