California 183-Day Rule Checker

Yes, but it is the single biggest risk factor in an FTB audit. Keeping the home furnished, available, and used on visits looks like you never gave up your permanent place of abode. If you keep the house, rent it out on a genuine arm's-length lease, move your spouse and dependents out with you, and make sure your actual annual day count and closest connections (driver's license, voter registration, doctors, banking) point to Nevada, not California.

No. California has no simple day-count threshold that by itself makes you a resident or nonresident. Instead it asks whether your closest connections, meaning family, home, and financial ties, point to California. You can spend fewer than 183 days in California and still be found a resident, or spend more and still be a nonresident if you can prove the presence was temporary or transitory.

There's no fixed safe number. Revenue and Taxation Code §17016 only creates a presumption of residency once you're present more than nine months (roughly 274 days); it doesn't protect you below that. FTB can still find you a resident at far fewer days if your spouse, kids, home, and financial life stayed centered in California.

Ordinary visits are fine, but every hour in California counts as a full day toward FTB's nine-month presumption, and frequent, long, or pattern-like visits (same house, same routine) get weighed as evidence your closest connections never really left. Keep visits documented, reasonably short, and avoid using a California address for mail, banking, or medical care during them.

California still taxes the portion of the option income tied to the vesting period you worked in California, using a ratio of California workdays to total workdays during that period. Moving before exercising doesn't erase this; FTB applies the allocation at exercise regardless of your residency then.

Practitioners commonly describe FTB residency audits running well over a year, often into the 18 to 24 month range once document requests, interviews, and appeals to the Office of Tax Appeals are factored in, especially for high-net-worth cases involving a business sale.

Under Revenue and Taxation Code §17016, spending more than nine months (roughly 274 days) of the tax year in California creates a rebuttable presumption that you're a California resident. You can overcome it with evidence the presence was for a temporary or transitory purpose, but the burden of proof is on you, not the FTB.