Moving from New Hampshire to Alabama: Residency, Taxes, and What to Prove

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire has no state income tax to complicate a travel nurse's tax-home analysis, which makes it an attractive tax-home state to claim, similar to Florida or Texas, provided the nurse genuinely maintains and returns to a New Hampshire home between assignments under the general IRS tax-home rules (Publication 463). New Hampshire itself publishes no nurse-specific guidance because it has no individual filing requirement to trigger one.

In Alabama

Alabama's major hospital systems (UAB in Birmingham, Huntsville Hospital) are significant travel-nursing markets. Because Alabama's presumption threshold is a cumulative seven months rather than 183 days, a nurse needs to track total months of Alabama presence across contracts within the tax year against that higher bar, while remembering that maintaining a permanent place of abode in Alabama is a separate condition of the presumption, not an automatic trigger from days alone.

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire has no major professional sports franchises, so it runs no state jock-tax regime of its own, and because it has no income tax, a New Hampshire-domiciled athlete owes zero state tax on the share of income attributable to New Hampshire duty days, unlike a player based in a state that both taxes and credits.

In Alabama

Alabama has no major-league professional sports franchise, so its jock-tax exposure runs entirely through visiting athletes and, more prominently, college athletics: NIL (name, image, likeness) income earned by student-athletes at Alabama's major programs is Alabama-source income subject to the state's standard individual income tax rates, an increasingly relevant issue as NIL payments have grown.

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire places no day-count cap on long visitors of its own, since it has no statutory residency test. The exposure runs entirely the other way: someone who claims New Hampshire domicile to escape a high-tax origin state (most commonly Massachusetts) but still spends significant time and keeps a home in that origin state can be taxed there as a statutory resident regardless of the New Hampshire claim.

In Alabama

Alabama's Gulf Coast (Gulf Shores, Orange Beach) draws seasonal visitors, but the seven-month presumption is a materially higher bar than the 183-day rule used in most other states, meaning a snowbird can stay considerably longer in Alabama than they could in a 183-day state before triggering the statutory presumption, though genuine domicile-based residency remains possible even for a shorter stay if the person's conduct shows intent to make Alabama home.

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire has no convenience-of-the-employer rule (it has nothing to source, having no income tax). The real friction runs the other direction: a remote worker who moves to New Hampshire but keeps a Massachusetts-based employer needs to confirm Massachusetts is not still asserting Massachusetts-source treatment of the wages under its own COVID-era sourcing rules, which New Hampshire itself challenged (unsuccessfully, at the Supreme Court) on behalf of its residents in 2020-2021.

In Alabama

Alabama has no convenience-of-the-employer rule. A remote worker physically performing work from Alabama for an out-of-state employer owes Alabama tax on that Alabama-source income under the state's standard sourcing rules; Alabama's full federal-income-tax deduction can meaningfully soften the effective state tax rate compared to states without that deduction.

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire follows the federal SCRA and MSRRA: a service member's home-of-record does not change solely because military orders station them in New Hampshire, and an accompanying spouse can generally elect the service member's domicile state under MSRRA. Because New Hampshire taxes no individual income, choosing it as home-of-record eliminates state income tax on military pay entirely.

In Alabama

Alabama follows the federal Servicemembers Civil Relief Act and Military Spouses Residency Relief Act, but its own regulation is notably taxpayer-unfriendly on the presumption side: federal employees and military personnel domiciled in Alabama remain presumptively Alabama residents, taxed on worldwide income, until they affirmatively prove a change of domicile, meaning a permanent change of station alone does not end Alabama tax residency without proof of genuine domicile abandonment. Alabama fully exempts military retirement pay from state income tax, a significant draw for the state's sizable veteran population given its bases (Redstone Arsenal, Maxwell-Gunter, Fort Novosel).

In New Hampshire

New Hampshire has no major hub airport for airline crew, but the federal carve-out (49 U.S.C. § 40116, taxing crew wages only in the state of residence or a state where over 50% of pay is earned) combined with New Hampshire's lack of any income tax makes it, like Florida and Texas, a common domicile choice for crew based at nearby Boston Logan who want to avoid Massachusetts income tax on their wages.

In Alabama

Alabama has a smaller commercial airline crew base than its neighbors, concentrated around Birmingham-Shuttlesworth. Federal law (49 U.S.C. § 40116) limits state taxation of air carrier employees to their state of residence and, narrowly, a state where more than 50% of pay is earned; crew domiciled in Alabama are taxed on their full wages under the state's standard resident rules.