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State Income Taxes (Podcast)

Something Personal Episode 15: State Income Taxes

Something Personal logo. In 43 states, residents must navigate state income taxes in addition to their federal tax obligations. This is not to mention state gift and estate taxes, inheritance taxes, and additional tax from a city or municipality. It can be a lot to keep track of — and that’s before you start factoring in extensive travel or working across state lines. How should you incorporate all this into your financial planning? Senior client service manager ReKeithen Miller joins host Amy Laburda to talk about state tax planning. Whether you’re deciding where to retire or navigating the “convenience of the employer rule,” the first step to solid tax planning is to understand the rules in play. As ReKeithen explains, tax usually won’t drive your decisions, but staying mindful can help you to execute those decisions in tax-smart ways. Listen in to learn why Florida is such an attractive place to retire; how working remotely can affect your state tax obligations; why tax authorities may care where you keep your family heirlooms; and more.

 

About the Guest

thumbnail of ReKeithen Miller headshot. ReKeithen Miller, CFP®, EA, supervises the staff of client service professionals in the Atlanta office, where he has been based since 2008. ReKeithen is fully involved in the broad range of services we offer clients, from tax and financial planning to investment management and insurance consulting. He also serves as a member of the firm’s investment committee and its Entertainment and Sports Team. His chapter in the firm's book Looking Ahead: Life, Family, Wealth and Business After 55, on state income taxes, served as the basis for this episode. For ReKeithen's full biography, click here.

Episode Transcript (click arrow to expand)

Amy Laburda 00:06
Welcome to “Something Personal,” the podcast where a team of financial experts explains why so many people wind up retiring in Florida. I'm Amy Laburda, the editorial manager at Palisades Hudson Financial Group. And with me today is my colleague ReKeithen Miller, a senior client service manager at our firm. So ReKeithen, why do so many people end up retiring to Florida?

ReKeithen Miller
Amy, thanks for having me. Well, as a native of Florida, I may be a bit biased. I mean, Florida has great weather, barring

00:35
the threat of hurricanes for a few months out of the year. We have Disneyland — or Disney World. So people love Minnie and Mickey. And then the tropical paradise that is Miami, and the great weather and beaches down there. But I think the biggest factor is the tiny fact that Florida doesn't have a state income tax. So that may play a lot into it. I just saw recently, just breaking news, Jeff Bezos just said he was moving down to Florida. One

01:00
of the world's richest men. So I guess if Florida is great enough for him, it can be good enough for anybody.

Amy Laburda
Certainly the lack of tax does add a little bow on top of the sunny beaches and Minnie and Mickey.

ReKeithen Miller
Definitely.

Amy Laburda
So today we're going to talk about how people who aren't lucky enough to live in places without it can factor state income tax into their financial plans, right?

ReKeithen Miller
Right, exactly. So there are 43 different state income taxes. Seven states don't charge an income tax, or broad-based income tax, at all.

01:28
And then beyond that, there's various cities that have income taxes. Think of New York City or Philadelphia that charge income taxes. And then there may be even small, like, townships. I had a client once that was working in Pennsylvania in a small town, and they had an income tax there. But one thing to remember is that tax is only part of the equation. Beyond that, states have

01:53
estate taxes — so that's taxes that you pay when you pass away; gift taxes, if you want to give away money; and also, in some states, there's inheritance tax, where if you're inheriting money, they may tax the beneficiaries once they receive the money. But if you're picking where you want to retire, you want to consider how state income taxes may come into play for you and your family.

Amy Laburda
OK. So I live in New York. Say you sold me on Florida. I'm ready to move down. But

02:18
I want to keep my New York City apartment for when I come back to see some shows or visit some family. So if I'm splitting my time between the two, which state do I actually live in for income tax purposes?

ReKeithen Miller
Right. So this is the classic “snowbird” scenario, right? Where someone is leaving the cold, frigid temperatures of the Northeast and they're moving down to Florida. And so New York has a state income tax. And in your scenario, you're keeping your home in New York,

02:42
and from their perspective, they're going to try to argue that you're still a tax resident of New York. So this gets into the concept of tax residency and domicile. So you can be a tax resident of two different states, or multiple states, at the same time, right? Depending on how much time you spend there, how much money you may earn, and where you may earn money in a particular state. And domicile, though, is — You can only have one domicile at one time, right? And that's a legal concept.

03:09
I like to have people think of their domicile as the place where they expect to return if they're, like, going on a long vacation. Let's say if you're in retirement, right, you may go on a long cruise, some of these around-the-world cruises, but it's a place where you intend to come back. It's kind of like your financial home base.

Amy Laburda
So if New York succeeds in saying I still live there, they get to tax my income the whole year, wherever I am. Is that right?

ReKeithen Miller
Right, right. So if they say, “Hey, you're still a New York resident. We don't think your domicile has changed.” Then

03:38
at that point, the state where your domicile is taxes you on your worldwide income. No matter where you're earning that income, that's going to be their position.

Amy Laburda
OK, so say I want to avoid that, and I move entirely to Florida. What do I need to do to show that my domicile is now Florida?

ReKeithen Miller
So to establish domicile, I think the first thing that you're going to want to do is … Although domicile is a legal concept, it's not something where you just sign a legal piece of paper or you make a legal declaration. The first step is being physically present in your new state, right? I can't say, “Hey, I'm moving from New York to Florida.

04:07
On January 1, I signed this piece of paper. My domicile is now Florida, but I'm still hanging out on Broadway and doing things in New York,” right? So you have to be physically present. That's the first thing you want to do. Secondly, you're going to want to, you know, if you registered to vote, if you have a car, you want to go ahead and register your vehicles there. If you have sold your home in your previous state, or if you haven't, rather, and let’s say you had a homestead exemption. You're going to want to revoke that, right? And get rid of that. Cause homestead means, “Hey, this is where my,

04:36
you know, basically where I'm based out of.” So you want to get rid of your homestead exemption in New York, in the example that we're talking about. And then more practical things that you're going to want to do is, like, update your financial accounts, the addresses that are on your accounts, and move your personal effects, right? Your heirlooms, you know, things that you hold near and dear to you. You want to go ahead and do that.

Amy Laburda
It's a lot to keep track of. So have you actually seen state tax authorities get that detailed, like where your family heirlooms are, when they're checking on people?

ReKeithen Miller
Oh, absolutely.

05:05
I've seen it where… There have been various court cases where they are looking at where people have their, let's say, family heirlooms, where they have… their artwork is stored or where their estate planning documents are located. They even go so far as looking at credit card statements or bank statements and see… because part of the equation may be, how many days did you spend in the state? Especially if you still have a home in the old state. They'll look at where financial transactions took place, because on your credit card statements, it usually tells you where the purchase was made. So they're going to look at that.

05:35
Many states, specifically New York that does have an income tax, they're pretty aggressive on this front and they want to look at maybe, I said, the number of days that you spent there. So typically, a lot of states have this bright line standard. If you spend more than 183 days in the state, they're going to say, “Hey, we think that this is really your domicile. This is the place that you… basically your financial sphere is centered.” And the thought

06:00
process there is, hey, you're spending more than half of the year here. You may say that you're in Florida, but we really think that you really haven't made that determination that you're leaving our state for good.

Amy Laburda
Yeah. So in the snowbird scenario, if you're coming up for a few weekends a year, that's going to be an easier argument to make, versus if you come to spend the entire Christmas season and then also the spring, and you're racking up those days.

ReKeithen Miller 06:23
Right, yeah. I would say that, but a key thing here is that intent is also important. You can have some specialized cases, depending on what we’re looking at. So I guess I will share one that I encountered here with a client. So we had a client that had diminished capacity. They actually had Alzheimer's, and their family were making some medical determinations for them. And they determined “Hey, we’re going to leave a particular state,” (this state didn’t have an income tax,) “and move to another state.”

06:48
Because this person needed to have specialized care to basically extend their life, their quality of life. So I ran into a few court cases, and we've been talking about New York, and so one of the cases was actually out of New York where, you know — really parallelled my client situation — where they were moving, had no intent to basically move, Alzheimer's. And the discussion was, “Hey, will this count toward the number of days in the state to determine tax residency and domicile?” And, you know, a lot of these court cases said, “No,

07:16
because the person had no intent to move. They had no mental capacity to move. Someone else made a decision for them. Before they became sick and unable to care for themselves, their intent was to stay in the state where they were.” So these are…

07:30
intent is also something that's very important to consider.

Amy Laburda
Makes sense. So obviously residency and domicile are very important things to keep in mind if you're considering, especially, a move for tax purposes. What are some other considerations that listeners should keep in mind if they're thinking about state taxes with their overall financial planning?

ReKeithen Miller
I mean, a key thing, I would think, is that state taxes, they don't always stay the same, right? States can change their rules. A key example here is Washington state, right? So.

07:57
You may think, “Hey, I want to move to Washington state. It's beautiful, the Northwest. I love the weather, the mountains, the forests up there, and I'm going to move there because there's no state income taxes,” right? Even the constitution, Washington's constitution, has certain rules about whether they can have a state income tax. But if you've been following the news, Washington actually changed and they have a capital gains tax now

08:19
on high-income earners that have capital gains over $250,000. So that's an example where state income taxes can change. Another thing is that some states tax income differently, right? So there may be states that tax with a flat tax, meaning everyone pays the same exact rate, no matter what their income is. And then some states, most states, use what's called a graduated income tax, which is similar to what people may be familiar with with their federal income taxes. The more money that you earn, the higher the tax rate may be.

08:49
So those are things that can be different between different states. One, they can always change their rules, nothing is set in stone. And two, the way they tax your income can change over time too.

Amy Laburda
And, as you mentioned with Washington state, obviously capital gains can be different. Beyond that, do different states tax different types of income differently?

ReKeithen Miller
Yeah. So one of the key, I guess, similarities between all the states is that they can't tax U.S. government obligations.

09:17
So that's just a legal law that they can't do that. And so I want to take a step here and just talk a little bit about that, because I've seen a lot of articles about people seeing that Treasury rates have been a lot higher and they're investing, like, where do you… Best places to put your cash? So you're thinking, “Hey, I live in a state with state income taxes. Let me buy some Treasury bonds or some bills to make sure I get a little bit higher yield on my money.” And people may do that through money market funds, or money market mutual funds. And so,

09:47
the key caveat here with that rule against taxing U.S. government obligations is the fact that certain states require that these funds have a certain percentage of their assets invested in actual government bonds. So the states that are in question are Connecticut, California and New York, three very high-tax states. And so if the funds don't have a particular percentage of their assets in the fund in Treasuries,

10:12
you may not get that benefit. So just because a fund has “government” or “Treasury” in a name doesn't mean that you're going to escape that taxation. And then beyond that, other things that states may tax differently — generally they don't tax municipal bonds, right? Issued by their state. They get, you know, municipal bonds are federally income tax free. And also if they're from your state, they can be state income tax free. And then you also have pensions. I mean, a lot of us have 401(k)s

10:42
and may not have pensions, but a lot of teachers do, if you work for state government. So a lot of states exempt state pensions from taxation, particularly their state. And then there's also 37 states that don't tax Social Security. So those are all examples of states deciding, “Hey, I'm not going to tax certain types of income, depending on what you earn.”

Amy Laburda
OK. So talking about pensions and Social Security kind of leads us more broadly to retirement income. On previous episodes of the podcast, we've talked about

11:12
how pensions are rarer these days, though obviously they still do exist in certain industries and with the government sometimes, more often. We've also talked about how people should have sort of a broader portfolio of retirement savings than just relying on Social Security in nearly every case. So if a person has done this, and they have a portfolio that includes a 401(k) and an IRA, or maybe some combination of other things,

11:37
how do those interplay with state income tax?

ReKeithen Miller
Right, so before 1996, it would have been a much, I guess, [more] complicated scenario, especially if you're moving from a state that had high income taxes, because before that time, the New Yorks or Californias of the world, if you had a 401(k) or an IRA — because remember, when you're deferring money into a traditional 401(k) or traditional IRA, that income isn't presently taxed, right? So it's tax deferred.

12:05
So it grows tax free until you take the money out. So from a New York standpoint, before Bill Clinton prohibited the practice, they would say, “Hey, you earned this money while you're in New York, or California. We're going to tax you even if you move to Florida and you change your domicile.” You did all the steps that we talked about earlier in the episode, right? They were trying to tax their former residents.

12:26
But like I said, in ‘96, Bill Clinton changed that law. So these deferred compensation arrangements, as they're often referred to, under the new law, they are not subject to those taxations from the old states, if you take the steps that we talked about. I would say, though, that it doesn't apply to certain nonqualified plans. So we're talking about, you know, you may see this with certain executives where they have, you know, these plans are set aside for executives or certain key employees that they are allowed to defer

12:55
the money and not be taxed presently while they're in their current state. But they don't meet certain government requirements as far as ERISA, meaning requirements for nondiscrimination, because basically that allows the companies to discriminate towards certain highly compensated employees. Those plans could still be subject to taxation if they don't meet certain rules as far as how the money is taken out, maybe who the money is able to be sent to, or the

13:24
the time frame. So if you're in one of those situations where you have a nonqualified plan, you're going to want to make sure that you probably work with a tax professional to see if, “Hey, like, should I… Am I going to face taxes if I move to another state from my prior state?” So these are things that you want to factor into the equation.

Amy Laburda
And just as a reminder for our listeners, if you have a Roth account, that's after-tax dollars. So

13:48
that doesn't really play in at this point. You've already paid that tax. That's already done and gone at this point.

ReKeithen Miller
Exactly. Those grow tax free and you pay the tax upfront, like you said. You're contributing after-tax money, so that's not really a consideration.

Amy Laburda
Great. So other than the things we've discussed so far, are there any other ways that you can keep some more of your money in your pocket from state income taxes?

ReKeithen Miller
Yeah. Another thing to think about is, like I said before there, we talked about certain income that isn't taxed.

14:17
Some states go beyond just, you know, not taxing Social Security. They may give, actually, a retirement income exclusion. So I'm going to speak to my current home state. Although I’m a native of Florida, I've lived in Georgia for quite some time, and out here in Georgia, they exempt certain retirees’ income. If you're 62 and above, they exempt certain interest, dividends, and even a certain amount of your earned income. So if you're 62, the exemption is about $35,000.

14:45
And once you're 65 and above, it goes to $65,000. So when somebody is making a determination of whether they're going to retire in one state or the other, you want to look at what other benefits the states will have. Even though they have a state income tax, they may … Depending on your circumstances, you may not pay much in state income taxes because of all the exemptions.

Amy Laburda
OK, let's back up a little back to the sort of cross-state questions. Obviously, if you live in one state,

15:13
your state income tax might still be a big part of your planning, but in some ways less complex, a little more straightforward. But some people don't just live and work in the same state. I know I personally am an example, in that I work in Connecticut but live in New York City, and I know that's pretty classic. There's the snowbird scenario, where you've retired and you're splitting your time. Or people travel for a lot of reasons. So what if someone splits their time

15:38
pretty evenly between two or more states, and one or both of them does have state income tax?

ReKeithen Miller
Right, so the short answer is, if you're in a nonresident state for enough days a year, or you earn income. So we've worked with some clients, maybe you're talking about people that are traveling around, right? So we've had some clients that are consultants that travel to different sites to work for their clients, and depending on the number of days that they spent there, we may have to divide their income

16:04
from their W-2. You may have clients that are partners in law firms, or certain partnerships that are flow-through entities, meaning that the income isn't taxed at the entity level, it's passed through to the partners. And so, depending on where that business may have operations, you can have income from various different nonresident states. And so people with this situation, they're going to want to consult with somebody to make sure that they're meeting all their obligations from a tax perspective. I guess

16:33
a somewhat longer answer depends on your particular situation. So like, for example, if you're simply moving from one state to another, like you pick up and move from one state, and… You are going to be considered a part-year resident of both of those states. So what you're going to do in that scenario is you're going to basically divide your income depending on when you earned it, right? So if you have… An employee and you're on a W-2, you're going to look at the dates of your payroll and divide that up depending on where you were at that particular time. In a lot cases,

17:03
your company's HR department, you know, if you're moving to another state and you tell them they're going to withhold taxes, you know, in the new location where you are, and you may get a W-2 that's going to divide that. But let's say that it doesn't. You want to make sure that what they're doing is accurate, right? If you have investment income, right, you're going to have... that's not going to get divided for you, right? So you're going to have to look at your tax reporting documents and make sure you're dividing things and you're paying the income to the correct state.

17:31
So that's somebody that's a part-year resident of both states. But if you, say, you aren't a part-year resident, you stayed in your current state, but you earned income in another state. In that case, you're going to be considered… filing a nonresident tax return in that state where you're not a resident. And in a lot of cases, the state will basically have you prorate the income, or you just allocate the income that you earn there, and then they're going to tax it. There are some differences. California, for example, they do it a little bit differently, where they have you basically

18:00
report your income as if you were a resident of that state. And then what it does is they have you allocate a portion of it depending on the tax, basically, or the income that you earned. And then they determine the tax that you would pay. And the key difference from that is that in the California example, you may end up paying a little bit more because more of your income is going to be taxed at the higher thresholds instead of it being at the lower thresholds where you're prorating it. So you want to make sure that you handle that properly.

Amy Laburda 18:30
OK. With the expansion of remote or hybrid work, especially in the last few years, more people may have run into something called the “convenience of the employer” rule. Would you mind explaining what that is and how that can affect your taxes?

ReKeithen Miller
Yeah, I would love to explain how people are encountering that nowadays, because we talked about the scenario where you're actually setting foot in different states, and you're traveling around. But with the convenience of an employer rule, you can owe state income taxes to a state that you never set foot in. So I'll give you a classic example.

18:58
We've been picking on New York a lot, and they're one of the states that have the convenience of the employer rule. And so let's say that you're working remotely. Hey, I'm here in… I'm in Florida, right? So we use — Florida and New York are classic examples we've been using throughout this conversation. And I get a remote-work job for a company based in New York.

19:17
And the convenience of the employer rule basically says, if there is no specific reason why you have to work remotely, New York is going to say, “Hey, you're working for an employer based in New York. We're going to tax you on the income that you earned.” And so a lot of remote jobs, hybrid jobs, people are applying for these jobs and not understanding that, hey, they may actually owe state income taxes to another state and need to consider that. At this point, they're…

19:44
the states that do have the convenience of the employer rule are Connecticut, Delaware, Nebraska, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. And then also Massachusetts instituted it for a period of time during the pandemic. Basically their idea was, “Hey, we had people that were coming into Massachusetts and working. And as a result of the COVID pandemic, they're going and working from home remotely. We still want our money, right? We still want to make sure that we can tax that money.” So they had that rule during the pandemic.

20:12
In the case of Connecticut and New Jersey, they kind of did it as a way [of] dealing with New York, because New York had that rule up there. And so the convenience of the employer rule really applies to individuals that may work in another state that has that rule. So because there was a lot of fights between the three states about who should actually get the tax revenue from their workers, right? You had a Connecticut worker

20:39
that may be working remotely for somebody in New York, and New York is taxing that. Connecticut was losing out on tax revenue because of that. So generally you can bypass the convenience of the employer rule. It’s not always hard and fast, but you have to have a few things that come into play, whether there's a bona fide reason for you to be working remotely. Let's say if you have to be at a certain, close to a certain facility or specialized facility, or if there's like an

21:09
actual office in your location, a bona fide office where you're doing certain work. So there are different rules depending on the state. So you want to look closely at that to see if it really will apply to your situation.

Amy Laburda
OK. So as you mentioned, here in the New York tri-state area, a lot of people work across state lines, either remotely or actually taking the train from one place to another. And I know there are other places in the country where you've got, you know…

21:34
Kansas City is on a state line. You've got a lot of other metropolitan areas near a border. Do workers like me often get taxed twice, or is there anything in place that can offset that?

ReKeithen Miller
So most people do not. They're not going to get taxed twice. What typically happens is if you are taxed by another state, your home state, where your domicile is, they typically give you a tax credit, right? So you'll get a credit that offsets the taxes that you pay to the other state, so that you're not

22:04
double taxed. And then you gave the scenario where people are traveling across lines. A lot of states have reciprocity agreements. What that really means is, if you are an employee and you're getting a W-2, right, and you're paid via wages, you have the option of… Let's say if I'm — You live in Indiana, but you work across state lines in Kentucky. Those two states have a reciprocity agreement where, if I'm working in Kentucky, I can tell my HR department, “Hey, don't withhold

22:31
Kentucky taxes. I'm actually an Indiana resident. Only withhold taxes in Indiana.” People in those scenarios, it makes their tax situation much easier. They don't have to file two tax returns and claim a credit on their home state's tax return. They simply just have the wages withheld as if they are working in Indiana. In the tri-state area, they don't have those reciprocity agreements. That's why they end up fighting over tax revenue and issues like that. So those are scenarios where you don't end up paying

23:01
double tax.

Amy Laburda
So people in their working lives, presumably some people could move for tax reasons, but a lot of people are moving for a job or for family or a lot of other reasons. But retirement is often a time when you can take those kinds of things into account a little more, sort of step back and think about it. We in our book Looking Ahead talk a little bit about how you might consider, when you're moving, how tax might play into that. Could you give us an example of

23:28
considering the many factors that might go into a move and sort of where tax could play into that sort of consideration.

ReKeithen Miller
Yeah, I would love to. So, you know, I'll give the example of my two states that I've lived in and maybe a retired couple and they're deciding, “Hey, should I move to Georgia versus Florida?” Now people may think of Florida and say, “Hey, there's no state income taxes. Case closed, I'm going to move to Florida.” But it really just depends on your circumstances. So like earlier, I was talking about how, you know, Georgia, they don't tax Social Security.

23:57
They also have the retirement income exclusion that we talked about, the $35,000 and $65,000. And so depending on what type of income you're earning and how much you're earning, you may end up paying little to no income tax, no matter if you live in Georgia versus Florida. Another thing that you want to consider beyond just the income taxes is how far your money will go. Like depending on if you want to buy a home in one state versus another. Generally speaking, Georgia tends to be a little bit more

24:26
inexpensive when you want to buy a home or buy land than in Florida. Also the case of Florida, we talked about earlier: hurricanes, the threat of hurricanes. Depending on where you want to live, near the coast, in certain scenarios it costs a fortune, up to five figures, to insure a home. I was just listening to a story the other day where some agents were telling people that owned a home, if they don't have a mortgage, maybe it's better for you to self-insure

24:53
than to pay the astronomical, high insurance rates, just because Florida's had a lot of natural disasters and a lot of insurance companies are pulled out of the state. And so you may factor that in and say, “Hey, it's going to cost me a lot to get the amount of house, the square footage of house I want in the area that I want versus in Georgia, it may be a lot less expensive.” Another thing to factor in is property taxes. How much are property taxes?

25:20
Generally speaking, Florida property taxes tend to be a little bit higher than in some areas in Georgia. If you want to travel in retirement, the proximity to airports — Hartsfield Jackson is an airport that connects, you can probably get to pretty much any place in the world out of Atlanta's airport, right? Obviously Florida has Miami, the international airport in Miami, and also Orlando, but just depending on how often or frequently you travel, you may want to take that into consideration.

25:48
And another thing I think that’s a big one is just proximity to family. You know, if they're deciding between Georgia and Florida, and their families in North Carolina or Tennessee, maybe Georgia wins out. So it's not only, you know, the income tax considerations, there's other things that go beyond that.

Amy Laburda
In our episode about federal income tax, we talked a little bit about how taxes need not to be the main driving decision all the time of financial choices,

ReKeithen Miller
Right.

Amy Laburda 26:15
but one thing that you're sort of considering in a bigger picture, and it sounds like that's true for state income taxes as well.

ReKeithen Miller
Yep. And beyond that, I mean, I will also mention estate taxes, right? We used Georgia and Florida; they don't have estate taxes. But let's say if you're moving to a state that does. And depending on how much assets you have, that may tip the balance, right? If it's particularly… If you want to plan on leaving money to your family instead of charity, that could, you know,

26:41
determine where you want to live, depending on the estate tax situation. So not just the income you're earning while you're alive, but what is left over and how much you're going to be able to pass down. Some states have pretty onerous estate taxes. And so you want to kind of factor that. At the federal level, the exemption is much higher than at some states. Some states are as little as a million dollars, and then they're going to start taxing you.

Amy Laburda
All right. So when you have conversations with your clients, I assume that you encourage them to keep all of this in mind.

27:09
But I think, also, that there are factors — you mentioned family, but other things like climate could play in too, I imagine. If you really hate humidity, I don't know that South Florida is going to be worth it for you, even with all the tax benefits, necessarily. So is that a thing that you generally find people sort of naturally take into consideration, or do people sometimes get, like, tunnel vision about taxes?

ReKeithen Miller
My experience has been that most of the time personal factors outweigh the financial factors, in a lot of cases. Like if you want to be close to the grandkids,

27:38
you're going to be close to the grandkids, whether in New York or California, which are high-tax states, or Massachusetts or New Jersey. If that's really important to you and family, a lot of people are going to decide that they're going to do that. Right? So those are the things that are going to weigh a lot higher than state income taxes. I think obviously there's conversations about the financial ramifications of where you're going to move.

28:01
And you don't want to go into it blindly, obviously. But there are reasons why, like I said, people are moving to California, New York, or they still live and work there. Right? It's because of other things that they like. You know, in New York, you can go and if you really like theater and Broadway, you want to be close to there, you're going to… Maybe you just move to New York. Right? But like you said, in certain instances — Florida, you may hate the humidity, or you may hate the cold. Right? So there are certain states — Alaska,

28:30
Wyoming, South Dakota — [that] don't have an income tax. But you may not want to move there because it's pretty cold throughout a lot of parts of the year, right? So my personal experience with clients is that income taxes are a consideration, and different people weigh that more or less depending on other factors that they have. And a lot of times, family, personal connections, activities that they like to do, get a lot more weight when they're doing that equation.

Amy Laburda 28:57
All right. We've had a lot to think about packed in a fairly compact package this conversation. Is there anything else about state income taxes that you think our listeners should bear in mind, or have we sort of covered everything you had?

ReKeithen Miller
I mean, I think we covered a lot of ground here. I mean, state income taxes a lot of times are… doesn't seem like the most popular topic, or hot topic, that people want to talk about. But I would say, like, just a few reminders — is that you just want to make sure that you're investigating before you leap.

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Right? Before you make a change, how is it going to impact your life, beyond… If you don't have any personal or family connections that are going to drive it, then you may want to just look at the hard, cold financial decision of like, “Hey, this is what I'm earning.” Look at, look at what your different sources of income[are] in retirement, because the state income taxes can impact how long you're… how long and how well you can live in retirement. Right? And so, although it's not a

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very popular topic among some people, or less popular than, you know, what vacation sites you want to travel to and different things like that, I think you want to weigh it in.

Amy Laburda
Makes a lot of sense to me. ReKeithen, thank you so much for coming to talk with me today.

ReKeithen Miller
Amy, thanks for having me. And I hope people got something that they can take home out of this conversation and use to make their lives better.

Amy Laburda
“Something Personal” is a production of Palisades Hudson Financial Group, a financial planning and investment firm

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headquartered in South Florida. Our other offices are in Atlanta; Austin; the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area; and the New York City metro area. “Something Personal” is hosted by me, Amy Laburda. Our producers are Ali Elkin and Joseph Ranghelli. Joseph Ranghelli is also our director, editor and mixer. Our firm has written two books: Looking Ahead: Life, Family, Wealth and Business After 55

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and The High Achiever’s Guide to Wealth, which offers advice for younger professionals, entrepreneurs, athletes and performers. Both books are available on Amazon, in paperback and as e-books.