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

The rule in South Dakota

South Dakota has no personal income tax, so there is no income-tax residency test.

People move to South Dakota for exactly this reason, and the state they left knows it. The risk is not South Dakota claiming you; it is your old state arguing you never really left. That argument is won or lost on day counts, so the records still matter.

Source: taxfoundation.org

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

South Dakota has no income tax, so there is no waiting period that matters for tax. To count as a South Dakota resident against your old state, you need to make South Dakota your domicile: move your permanent home, licence, registration and daily life there, and be able to show more days in South Dakota than in the state you left.

South Dakota residency requirements for taxes

South Dakota itself has no income-tax residency requirements, because it has no income tax. The requirements that matter are your former state’s, which will want proof that you moved your domicile and cut your day count there. These are the facts states look at.

• 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 South Dakota 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

Other states