New full timers

[oldick75]

? ?Hi. My name is Dick Mutsch and my wife's name is Lila. We're about to become full timers. Our house is sold and we're going to buy a GMC diesel truck and a 34 ft. Cardinal fifth wheel. We have a lot of questions about that lifestyle. The two most important are, if you buy a rig in a state with no sales tax, what are the requirements? Do you have to establish residency with a PO box or some other way? The other is, How do mail forwarding services work?Thanks, Dick

 

[Tom]

Dick and Lila

Welcome to our friendly forum, and congratulations on the new lifestyle.

Some of our members will be along shortly to respond in more detail to your questions. Meanwhile, many folks belong to the Escapees Club and use their mail forwarding service.

 

[Ron3]

Dick and Lila,

Welcome to the RV Forum Framily.  PLease join in any of the ongong discussions or start new discussions relating to u=our RVing lifestyle.  You have come to the right place to get answers to any questiuons that you have.  The only stupid question is the questions not asked. ;D

Some folks do establish new residency after retiring.  We use the escapees mail service and our official residence is Texas.  I am sure you will receive several answers to your questions.

What part of the contry are you from?  Any chance you will be able to join us at a RV Forum Rally?

 

[DonJordan]

    Hi. My name is Dick Mutsch and my wife's name is Lila. We're about to become full timers. Our house is sold and we're going to buy a GMC diesel truck and a 34 ft. Cardinal fifth wheel. We have a lot of questions about that lifestyle. The two most important are, if you buy a rig in a state with no sales tax, what are the requirements? Do you have to establish residency with a PO box or some other way? The other is, How do mail forwarding services work?Thanks, Dick

Hi Dick & Lila.  Welcome to the RV Forum - we are happy to see you here.  Sounds like you have things pretty well planned out for your full-timing life.  Regarding purchase in a state with no sales tax, there are a number of potential problems.  AFAIK you MUSTestablish a residence in that state.  For instance, Oregon has no sales tax, but they have become VERY hard nosed on the residency requirements.  If you happen to be a California resident prior to establishing a temporary residence in Oregon before purchasing your rig, you can count on getting some nasty letters demanding California sales tax - I guess CA and OR are working together to stop this practice.  I suspect that the same is true of other states.  When we purchased our coach in 2000 we were CA residents until April of that year but sold our home and used an address in Montana.  We leased a spot on friends property, moved our bank accounts to Lewistown, MT, and took out Monatana driving licenses.  Despite all of this, CA later tried to collect over $20K in sales tax.  We were able to show our move to Montana was not a ploy so didn't have to pay CA sales tax.  We DID have to pay the MT new vehicle one time fee that amounted to several thousand dollars (but a lot less than the CA sales tax  ;D).  We found that our insurance company's rates in MT were exhorbitant so changed our residence to Livingston, TX, the home ot the Escapees Club.  We use them for our mail forwarding service and as our residence address.  We are registered to vote there, moved our bank accounts there and have been happy with the arrangement.  One advantage of a TX address is that there is no state income tax.

Hope this helps.