The short answer

• Days matter, but no day count settles it. Advisors often target more than half the year outside California. The FTB still weighs all of your ties.
• The size of each home is one of those ties. A large California home and a small Nevada one works against you.
• Bring your CPA in before you shop, and let their timeline set the search.

01

How does California decide you left?

Many advisors tell clients to spend more than half the year, about 181 to 183 days, outside California. That is a sensible working target, and it lines up with a California regulation’s six-month figure. It isn’t a safe harbor, though. Here is how California actually decides.

The ties the FTB lists include where your spouse and children live, your principal residence, your driver’s license, vehicle registration and voter registration, where your banks, doctors, accountants and attorneys are, your clubs and social ties, and where your property and investments sit.

02

Why the size of your Nevada home matters

The FTB’s own audit manual lists “the approximate sizes and values of each of the residences” as a factor. The home you keep in California is compared with the home you buy here.

You can’t keep a $4M home in California, buy a $300K studio condo here and claim residency. It will get flagged.

That is how a CPA one of my clients works with put it. Buy a home here that reads as where you live, not a place you stay.

03

What to do on the Nevada side

Then move the rest of your life with you: banks, doctors, memberships and where you file. The FTB looks at the whole picture.

04

How do you prove where you were?

Days are one factor, and an audit can ask for years of them. A day-tracking app on your phone records your location in the background and builds the log for you.

• Monaeo is the best known. It is used by CPA firms and covered in the national press, and it is the most expensive.
• Domicile365 costs less and produces signed reports that can be checked for changes.
• No app is endorsed by the FTB. An app proves your days. It doesn’t prove the rest of your ties.

05

Bring your CPA in before you look at homes

Earlier this year, a California client and I found the right home in Henderson. Before he signed, his financial advisors looked at the timing. His clock out of California hadn’t started yet, so buying that year wouldn’t change his tax position until 2028. The home made sense. The timing didn’t, and the purchase moved to a later year.

The lesson is about order. When a tax move is part of the reason you are buying, your CPA or financial advisor should set the timeline before the search starts, not after you have found the house.

Get your CPA or financial advisor on board first. Their timeline should drive the search, not the other way around.

06

Questions buyers ask