Montana residency rules

How many days can you spend in Montana before you’re a resident?

Q: How many days can you spend in Montana before you’re a resident?

Montana has no fixed day count. You are a resident if Montana is your domicile, decided on the facts of where your permanent home is.

There is no fixed number. Montana taxes you as a resident if it is your domicile, your permanent home, and it decides that on the facts rather than a day count. Days in the state are evidence, not a threshold.

The rule in Montana

Montana defines a resident as anyone domiciled in the state or who maintains a permanent place of abode there, even while temporarily absent. Neither the statute nor the regulations set a day-count threshold.

Because Montana looks at the whole picture, the day count is still the first thing an auditor asks for. Spending most of the year in Montana is hard to explain away; spending most of it elsewhere, with records to prove it, is the strongest evidence you have.

Source: revenue.mt.gov

How long do you have to live in Montana to be considered a resident?

There is no set number of days. Montana treats you as a resident from the day it becomes your domicile, the place you intend to return to, and it judges that on the facts: your home, licence, registration, family and where you spend your time. Living there most of the year makes it hard to argue otherwise.

Montana residency requirements for taxes

Montana looks at domicile first, then at days. Domicile is where your permanent home is, judged on the facts below. There is no fixed day count, so the facts below decide.

Where your permanent home is, and where you spend more of your nights
Driver’s licence, vehicle registration, and voter registration
Where your spouse, children, and pets live and go to school
Where your doctor, dentist, accountant, and bank are
Where the things you would not want to lose are kept
Day counts, which are the one factor the state can verify independently

What counts as a day

In most states any part of a day spent in the state counts as a full day, including the day you arrive and the day you leave. Layovers and driving through can count too. A few states exempt time in transit or days spent in a hospital, but the safe assumption is that if you were there at any point, the day counts.

The count is per calendar year and resets on January 1. Days do not have to be consecutive.

How Montana checks

The burden of proof is on you, not the state. In a residency audit the state asks for the records that show where you physically were, day by day:

Mobile phone location and call records
Credit and debit card transactions
Flight itineraries, toll records, and parking receipts
Calendar entries, social media posts, and photos with location data

Gaps in your records are usually resolved against you. A day you cannot place somewhere else is a day the state can argue you spent inside it.

Keep the proof automatically

Every day, counted. Every state, on record.

Whereabouts runs quietly in the background on your iPhone and logs which state you are in, day by day. You get a running day count for Montana and every other state, a timeline of every stay, and a one-tap CSV export for your accountant. Nothing leaves your phone.

Get Whereabouts, free for 7 days

Other states

Alabamaseven months AlaskaNo income tax Arizonanine months Arkansassix months Californianine months Coloradosix months Connecticut184 days Delaware184 days District of Columbia183 days FloridaNo income tax Georgia183 days Hawaii201 days Idaho271 days IllinoisDomicile Indiana184 days Iowa184 days Kansassix months Kentucky184 days Louisianasix months Maine184 days Maryland183 days Massachusetts184 days Michigan183 days Minnesota183 days MississippiDomicile Missouri184 days Nebraska183 days NevadaNo income tax New HampshireNo income tax New Jersey184 days New Mexico185 days New York184 days North Carolina184 days North Dakotaseven months Ohio213 contact periods OklahomaDomicile Oregon201 days Pennsylvania184 days Rhode Island184 days South CarolinaDomicile South DakotaNo income tax TennesseeNo income tax TexasNo income tax Utah183 days Vermont184 days Virginia184 days WashingtonNo income tax West Virginia184 days WisconsinDomicile WyomingNo income tax

Whereabouts helps you keep records. It is not tax or legal advice, and residency rules change. Confirm the rule for your situation with a CPA or tax attorney before relying on it.