In the specific case of Massachusetts, living in New Hampshire (no income tax or sales tax) instead is pretty practical for a lot of people. Doesn't help you that much if you commute to an MA employer but I know a lot of people who did commute in from NH and, these days, a lot of people who became officially remote workers in NH.

Of course, there are lots of other reasons why out-of-staters might choose to move to MA.

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7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

[deleted]

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toomuchtodo 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

So you close the gap with policy as you find folks attempting to evade it. You'll always have leakage, it's inevitable, but not an excuse to not implement progressive tax policy on the highest levels of income and wealth. Puerto Rico has very favorable income tax treatment, but outside of some crypto bros, hasn't moved the HNW or high income migration needle, for example.

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ghaff 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I'm not sure why you consider living in NH evading anything. There are policies related to actually spending a lot of work time in other states, including MA. NH has established policies that generally work for them--and generally provide fewer services in exchange for lower taxes which seems like a valid choice to me.

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toomuchtodo 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I only consider it evading if claiming residency in a low or no tax jurisdiction while still maintaining business activity or presence in the jurisdiction in scope for the taxes we're discussing. If you live in NH, work in NH, and have no nexus or economic activity derived from MA, carry on.

NY sources taxes to the employer's office location in NY if a worker works remotely under certain circumstances, for example [1]. If geography can be used to shift or avoid tax exposure to income, I see no problem with using the law to prevent that, depending on the target outcome. My global income is subject to US federal taxes, regardless of my residency (although foreign exclusions apply under a reasonable income threshold, ~$120k/year, under the assumption I am paying taxes where I reside outside the US) [2].

[1] https://www.anchin.com/articles/remote-workers-and-the-conve...

[2] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

	▲	ghaff 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		At my former company, remote employees did increasingly have to track significant time in-person at other company locations--but if you're really working remotely.... MA did try to wrest taxes from NH-resident employees when they went remote en masse during COVID but I don't think they succeeded. (The official company HQ wasn't even in MA although they had a large facility and a lot of senior people there.) I'm not sure how you reasonably allocate state/local taxes other than by physical presence. Any reasonably large company has an economic nexus in many states and even countries.