State Tax Residency Rules: The Ties Your Old State Counts

California's own residency guide describes a person who declared themselves a Nevada resident in September 2025, moved their bank accounts to Nevada, and kept spending six or seven months a year in the California home they kept, along with a social club and business connections in California. The Franchise Tax Board's verdict, in Example 3 of FTB Publication 1031 (2025): "Your declaration of residency in Nevada does not establish residency in that state." The person was still a California resident, taxed on income from all sources. The declaration was real. The ties outweighed it.

Checked: 15 October 2026 against the pages linked throughout — New York's residency FAQ and the December 2021 edition of its Nonresident Audit Guidelines on tax.ny.gov, FTB Publication 1031 (2025) on ftb.ca.gov, Minn. Stat. § 290.01 (2025) and Minn. R. 8001.0300 (published 12 July 2023) on revisor.mn.gov, and two New York DMV pages on moving and insurance lapses. Residency rules and agency guidance change, sometimes mid-year. Open the linked page before acting on any figure here. This page gives no tax or legal advice.

This is the other half of moving your domicile. The new state wants evidence that you arrived, and there are filings for that, covered in Declaring Domicile: The Filings That Record Intent. The old state asks a different question: did you actually leave? It answers that by looking at what you kept. Three revenue departments have written their lists down in enough detail to compare, and the lists disagree about which ties matter most.

Two questions your old state can ask, and only one is about intent

Most people picture residency as one test. Several states run two.

The first is domicile: the place you treat as home and intend to return to. New York's residency FAQ says your New York domicile "does not change until you can demonstrate with clear and convincing evidence that you have abandoned your New York domicile and established a new domicile outside New York State." That is a high bar, and the burden sits on you.

The second test ignores intent. It asks whether you kept a dwelling in the state and spent enough days there. Pass both prongs and you are taxed as a resident even though your domicile is somewhere else. New York's FAQ puts it as a question: "Can I be a resident of New York State if my domicile is elsewhere?" The answer is yes. Minnesota writes it into the statute.

Two things about that table matter for someone who has just moved.

The dwelling prong does not care whether you own the place. New York's FAQ says a permanent place of abode is a structure "suitable for year-round use" that you permanently maintain, and "it does not matter whether you own it or not." A lease you never ended counts. So can an apartment a spouse leases, in Minnesota's statutory definition.

And the day count is generous to the state. A morning flight out of the old state's airport is a day in the old state. Minnesota's own rule gives the example: someone in the state from 1 March to 15 April who leaves at 6:00 a.m. on 15 April is treated as present on 15 April.

New York ranks the ties, and the ones you can change in an afternoon rank low

The most detailed list comes from New York's Nonresident Audit Guidelines, a 107-page manual written for its own auditors. The edition the department's FAQ links to as of the check date is dated December 2021.

It divides ties into two groups. The five primary factors are Home, Active Business Involvement, Time, Items "Near and Dear," and Family Connections. Auditors are told to analyse those first and to ask about anything else only if the primary factors point to New York or come out roughly even.

The eight "other" factors include several of the things movers treat as the finish line:

• the address where bank statements, bills and financial correspondence mostly arrive
• where safe deposit boxes are kept
• where cars, boats and planes are registered, and which state issued your driver's license
• where you are registered to vote, and how often you actually vote there, including primaries and school board and budget elections
• a Manhattan Parking Tax exemption
• telephone service at each residence
• legal documents that name a place as your domicile or primary residence, such as a will, a divorce decree, a STAR school tax relief application, or a rent-stabilised lease
• a green card

The manual says why these rank low. The auditor should rely on them knowing that "the individual has the ability to easily control and regulate many of these factors." It gives the example of someone switching voter registration, car registration or a license to another state "for convenience purposes, while never intending to change domicile." It also says the other factors, "by themselves, cannot be the basis for a residency determination."

That cuts both ways. The license and voter card will not carry a domicile change by themselves. But they are also not enough to hold you in New York once the primary factors have moved.

What the five primary factors look at

Home. The auditor compares the New York residence with the homes elsewhere, including their size and how each one is used. Keeping a New York home is common in these cases and, the manual says, not sufficient on its own.

Active business involvement. Whether you still run or actively take part in a New York business or job.

Time. A count of days in each place. The manual cites the Buzzard case, where the court said that "most significantly" the couple spent more time in New York than in Florida. It also cites Knight, where a New Jersey domiciliary's significant time in New York did not make him a New York domiciliary. Days are evidence, read together with everything else.

Items "near and dear." Family heirlooms, works of art, collections, photo albums, pets. The manual quotes an administrative law judge in Matter of Dittrich, where the couple had not removed such items from their upstate home: "in domicile matters informal acts can be persuasive in determining a person's general habit of life." It suggests auditors may look at insurance policies, because a policy can show where valuable items actually are.

Family. Normally the taxpayer, spouse or partner, and minor children. The manual says "the location where minor children attend school can be one of the most important factors in determining where someone is domiciled."

California lists 13 ties, and puts the DMV ones on the main list

California's approach is flatter. Section G of Publication 1031 starts from "the underlying theory of residency": you are a resident of the place where you have the closest connections. Then it lists factors, with the warning that "no one factor is determinative" and that "it is the strength of your ties, not just the number of ties, that determines your residency."

Here is how California's list lines up against New York's ranking. The New York column is the group each tie falls into in the 2021 Audit Guidelines.

Sources: every row in the California column is from Section G of FTB Pub. 1031 (2025); every row in the New York column is from Section V of the Nonresident Audit Guidelines. "Not listed" means it is not among New York's five primary or eight other factors; the manual says factors outside those lists are considered incidental.

Publication 1031 also says this is "only a partial list." Its examples show how the weighing goes. In Example 6, a Californian on a 15-month assignment abroad kept a California license, voter registration, bank accounts and a car in storage, and stayed a resident. In Example 5, a family sold the house, moved the children into school abroad, got a local license and made social connections there, and became nonresidents from the move date.

Minnesota lists 25 ties, and a statute bars a few outright

Minnesota's rule is the longest list of the three. Minn. R. 8001.0300 subp. 3 runs from item A to item Y and ends with a line every state on this page would sign: "Any one of the items listed above will not, by itself, determine domicile."

Several items are ones a mover controls directly:

• H. Whether homestead status was requested on the new home, and whether homestead status on the former home has not been renewed
• J. The jurisdiction that issued your valid driver's license
• M. The jurisdiction that issued your vehicle license, and where the vehicles physically are
• N. Whether you bought resident or nonresident fishing or hunting licenses
• O. Whether you filed an income tax return as a resident or nonresident
• U. The address where you receive mail
• X. Where you, your spouse or your children go to school, and whether resident or nonresident tuition was charged
• Y. What you told an insurance company about your residence

Items N and Y are easy to miss. A resident fishing license bought on a summer visit back, or an auto or homeowner's policy still priced on the old address, is a dated record, kept by the licensing office or the insurer, that you still claimed the old state as home.

The statute narrows the rule. Minn. Stat. § 290.01 subd. 7(c) says neither the commissioner nor any court shall consider charitable contributions, "the location of the individual's attorney, certified public accountant, or financial adviser," or the place of business of a financial institution where you open or keep an account or apply for credit. Rule item Q still mentions "other transactions with financial institutions," but the statute is the higher authority and it takes the financial-institution item off the table.

So the same tie can count in one state and be barred in the next. Keeping your accountant in Minneapolis is a non-factor by statute in Minnesota, and the location of accountants and attorneys is on California's list. That is why the useful question is never "what ties matter?" It is "what ties does the state I left say matter?"

The house you kept is the tie that does the most work

All three lists put the dwelling near the top. It is also the tie people most often keep by necessity, because a house that has not sold is still a house.

Minnesota answers this case in its rule. Subpart 6 says a person who moves their domicile out of Minnesota is not considered to be maintaining an abode there, even though they continue to own or rent the dwelling, if they have moved their personal furnishings and belongings out and are "making a good faith effort to sell, lease, or sublease the dwelling." The same subpart says a vacation cabin not suitable for year-round use is not an abode, and neither are quarters without cooking or bathing facilities.

That gives the paper trail a shape. The things that show a good faith effort are dated documents made by other people: a listing agreement, price reductions, a property manager's contract, a sublease. The moving company's delivery receipt shows the belongings left.

New York's FAQ has no equivalent sentence for its place-of-abode test, which asks only whether the dwelling is permanently maintained and suitable for year-round use. The Audit Guidelines do address the unsold house on the domicile side. Under the Home factor, a taxpayer "attempting to sell" their only New York residence is weighed on facts "such as whether the taxpayer has sold or moved possessions from the location, contracted with a real estate firm to sell the property, etc." The manual cites Matter of Silverman, where a New York home went on the market in 1975 and did not sell until 1983, and the Tribunal found it unclear how actively the couple had tried to sell it. A house that sits furnished with your belongings in it is a different fact from an empty one with a lockbox on the door.

Property tax exemptions tied to a primary residence are part of the same tie. Minnesota's item H asks about homestead status on both the new and the former home. New York's "other" factors include a STAR school tax relief application, because the application itself says which house is your primary residence. Claiming a primary-residence exemption in both states at once is two signed statements that cannot both be true. Each county or town assessor has its own process for ending one, so look up the assessor for the old address.

The DMV tie that can suspend a license in the state you left

Most DMV ties are evidence. In New York one of them can also cost you a license.

The New York DMV's moving page says: "We will never accept out-of-state insurance coverage of any type for a vehicle registered in New York." And: "You must surrender your vehicle registration and plates to the DMV before the New York State liability insurance is canceled."

The order matters because the common way to move a car policy is the reverse. You buy coverage in the new state, then cancel the old policy. If the New York plates are still on file when the old policy ends, the DMV sees a car registered in New York with no New York insurance.

The DMV's insurance lapse page spells out what follows:

The page's own summary is four words: "no insurance, no plates!"

This is a DMV rule, not a tax rule, and this page checked it only against New York's DMV. Read your old state's DMV page before you cancel anything. The general version of the insurance sequence is covered in Car Insurance Across State Lines: Where the Gap Opens. The point here is that an old plate is an open record with the old state. Closing it in the right order is one tie you can actually cut, and a recorded lapse is a document that says the car was still treated as registered in the old state.

Counting days: the records each state names

Time is the one primary tie that is pure arithmetic, and the states say what records they expect.

Minnesota is the most specific. Subpart 5 says a person domiciled elsewhere who keeps a place of abode in Minnesota and claims to be a nonresident must have adequate records to show that more than one-half of the tax year was spent outside Minnesota. It defines adequate records as contemporaneous records of where you were on particular dates, including "calendars, diaries, canceled checks, credit card receipts, and airline tickets."

The word "contemporaneously" carries the weight. A reconstructed calendar made the next spring is weaker than the card statement that already exists.

Minn. Stat. § 290.01 subd. 7(b) also says individuals "shall keep adequate records to substantiate the days spent outside the state." New York's Audit Guidelines describe auditors comparing days in New York with days elsewhere, and its FAQ counts any part of a day. The folder that answers those questions is set out in Part Year Residency: Records to Keep From Day One.

One caution from the Minnesota rule. Subpart 7 says there is "no presumption" that a person domiciled in Minnesota lost that domicile just by being absent for over half the year. Being away does not prove you left. It only answers the day-count test.

Ties you cut at a counter, and ties that change only when your life does

Put the three lists side by side and the ties sort into two kinds.

Some end with a single transaction, each producing a dated receipt:

• surrendering plates and registration to the old DMV, before the insurance ends (in New York)
• getting the new state's license (the order that works is in Car Registration After Moving: License Comes First)
• registering to vote in the new state, and asking the old county to cancel the old record (covered in Voter Registration After Moving States: It Doesn't Transfer)
• ending a primary-residence property tax exemption on the old home
• changing the address on insurance policies, bank statements and mail
• buying nonresident, not resident, fishing or hunting licenses on visits back (Minnesota's item N)

These are what New York calls easy to control. Do them, because they cost little and they show up on the lists, but they do not carry the case alone.

Others change only when the facts change:

• where the house is, and whether the old one is sold, leased, empty or still lived in
• where the children go to school
• where you spend your days
• where the things you value are kept
• where you work, and whether a business still depends on you being in the old state

These are New York's primary factors and the top of California's list. No form ends them. The evidence is that your life now runs from the new address, and the records that show it are the ones other people date for you: school enrolment, the moving company's paperwork, a listing agreement, a year of card statements.

Where the comparison stops: none of this tells you how either state will rule on your year, or which return your income belongs on. Those are tax questions for the revenue department of the state you left, or for a preparer licensed to answer them. What this page can do is point you to the list your old state wrote.

Before the end of this week, find that list. Search the old state's revenue department site for its residency or domicile guidance. If it is New York, California or Minnesota, the documents are linked above. Then go through it line by line and write next to each item where that tie sits today, the old state or the new one. Every line still marked with the old state is either a counter visit to book or a fact that will take longer to change.