Residentially Believable

Residentially Believable

I have now been a California resident since February 4th at the very latest. I arrived here in my car on December 21, but was back in NYC in January for a few weeks while we wrapped up move-related logistics and closed-out our apartment. The movers finished up on February 3rd and the apartment was empty and broom-cleaned that night as we slept in the hotel next door. I surrendered my apartment keys that same day. These are provable and factual events with third-party verification available. Since then I was only in New York for two days in early March before the Coronavirus cut short my planned trip on to London, and I came running back to California, and haven’t left the state once in the ensuing 105 days. I have no intention of leaving the state for the rest of 2020 except for five days on a road trip to visit the Columbia Gorge area of Oregon. If I were looking at a day calendar for 2020, that would mean that I will have been in California for 333 of the year’s 366 days (91%) and will have been a primary resident for that same percentage and voted twice in national elections or primaries from this address. All of my credit cards and official documents with the government have been changed to this California address and I get no billing at any other address. I’m pretty sure that makes me a California resident, who will pay state taxes here for 2020…which is hardly a tax dodge even compared to New York.

But I know Nëw York and they hate, hate, hate saying goodbye to any tax-paying resident. They look for anything to cling to. I do have a house in upstate New York in Ithaca, but I do not technically own it. It is the property of Cornell University, leased to me for the past 24 years, during which time, as part of my lease arrangement, I pay the real estate taxes. And yet, that billing lists the University as the owner with me as the mere billing recipient. I used to claim those taxes as a deduction on my federal taxes, but that is no more as we all know. I think it will be very hard for New York to keep it’s long tax claws into me. But still, I worry.

One of my readers has once asked me if my Uber-liberal views have caused me to give all my money away to level myself with the rest of the world economically. The answer was and remains no, but I have paid a mighty sum to the federal, state and municipal authorities of my residence for the past forty-five years of adulthood. I am reminded of it every year when the Social Security Administration sends me the summary of my status with them, where they show my taxable income over the years for absolute, Medicare and Social Security purposes. In addition to the income recognition, this chart shows the amounts I have paid into the system in Medicare (FICA) and SS purposes. They are staggering sums to me every time I look through them. I feel the federal government is somehow doing a disservice to itself and me by making me look at this every year. I realize I will likely never use or tap-into either accumulated pool and that most of what I have had deducted will simply escheat to the state and add to the sum total of all the federal, state and municipal taxes I have paid (including sales, real estate and miscellaneously levied taxes). I do not begrudge the government one penny of all of that and while I’m not sure it is fair to say I was happy at all times to be taxed as I was, I do accept it as my obligation to pay for all the wonderful known and unknown benefits that accrued to me and my family from all of that.

I am not required in any way shape of form to give money to my Alma Mater, Cornell, but I have done so all along and do so at a level that has earned me their highest donor distinction, which is called “Foremost Benefactor and Builder of the University.” I believe that much of my success is due to what I learned and was prepared for by the University, so I was quite a willing donor to the perpetuation of that heritage, from which all of my children have also benefitted (though I also paid every penny of the required tuition for them). I am a member of the Cayuga Society which means I have provided for Cornell in my will and they will get a piece of my final estate. Such is my commitment to them, even though I have not always been a complete fan of every single interaction I have had with them (I will not get into that here). I believe it is important to support the things you believe in.

So, tomorrow I am scheduled to go to the California Department of Motor Vehicles in Temecula, thirty minutes north of here by car, to seek a new California state driver’s license. The only two driver’s licenses I have ever had have been an Italian one from when I drove my motorcycle in Rome and a New York State one that I have held since 1972, obtained in Ithaca when I was in college and upgraded to include motorcycles somewhere along the way in about 1982. Tomorrow, if my appointment goes as planned, I will get a new California “Real ID” Driver’s License and, I suspect, be asked to surrender my New York State License (unless California doesn’t care if I walk around with another state driver’s license that remains valid). I figure this will be the last step in the official redomestication of myself from New York resident to California resident. Technically, I suspect California would say that really only happens once I file a California state income tax form next year.

I wonder if there will be some nice lady up in Albany wondering where my New York State tax filing is next year when they do not get their usual tax filing report from me. Maybe they will wonder if I died? I suspect it happens enough that they will correlate to my age and think, “I guess he retired somewhere.” But that’s when I will get thrown into that pile of potential scofflaws that will have to prove out that I am not simply evading my New York State tax obligations. I have a friend Frank, who once spent a whole year living alone in a barren ski condo in Incline Village, Nevada to establish his state tax redomestication. I had to give testimony on his behalf in Virginia State Tax Court that he was really bifurcating from his wife and living apart for whatever reasons he had and that he was really sitting out there all that time. People go to great lengths to outrun the tax man. So has it always been, so will it always be.

But not so for me. I am one of the stupid ones who did not move to Florida or Nevada or Wyoming or, for that matter, Costa Rica (which I might have been able to justify since I lived there for two years in my youth). I moved to Cali-fucking-fornia. I like to say to people that I didn’t think I was paying enough taxes, so I moved here from New York, God knows, California needs the business. At least I am resident in a state that Trump hates almost as much as he hates New York. The next time you hear from me I will be a card-carrying Californian. I was once given an award on a stage in Staten Island by none other than SNL’s Colin Jost, who is one of two cast members from Staten Island (the other being Pete Davidson, star of the recent Judd Apatow movie, The King of Staten Island). He made some crack about me not being a native Staten Islander. I used the occasion to flash him my recently renewed New York State Driver’s License with my Staten Island address. Maybe somebody will challenge my Californianess soon and I will be residentially believable thanks to the Temecula DMV.