The CA FTC is the worst state tax agency in the entire country. It hates all humans. If you argue with it, it just triples your penalties. If you don't have a filing requirement in California, but somehow get on its list, it haunts you for YEARS.
Who-ee! Ms Cat, don't hold back. Just let it all out. You'll feel better. We're
here for you.
I believe everything you wrote. I was dumbfounded to learn, some years ago, that if you had ever earned any money in CA, the CA FTB attempted to levy on your pension in whatever state you now lived. Any money earned in California was subject to CA state taxes, in perpetuity, is their position. Apparently the state of Nevada just (politely) tells them to fuck off, their levies are ignored, which is one reason many CA retirees move there.
It's an outgrowth of a couple factors. 1) State-level compulsory empathy, producing ever-growing entitlements and ever-growing services. It's not enough that you give individually, it's more efficient and, of course, caring, to compel everyone to give via their taxes. And it's important that we also coronate state and municipal workers; their unions have been so generous to the politicians. 2) a state-level sock-the-rich mentality. The problem is the eel-like ability of the rich to slither out of the net - defer income, slip it into post-retirement compensation schemes, take it as carried interest or unexercised stock options, refuse to sell appreciated stock even when the resulting taxes would make a big difference to the downtrodden via their tax gatherers, the CA FTB. This kind of revenue harvesting makes any state that practices it terribly vulnerable; a vast portion of the revenues is supposed to come from a tiny percentage of the populace. Like all other leverage it can run both ways, and if the tiny percentage who is supposed to pay so much craps out (as they know well how to do), there can be huge downswings in revenue. Plus the rich are self-portable. As a friend said of modern relationships, "Nobody
has to be here." If you are a part of the California royalty, you can sell a ranch house in CA and buy a ranch in New Mexico (Ed Marston).
The poor sad lackeys at the CA FTB have to get it somewhere. You and I are apparently sufficiently docile to be good targets. Based on my experience, they simply make up some figure that you "owe," dare you to dispute and double it if you do, thus extorting your payment based on a muttered "life's too short." When they did it to the trust, I thought about appeals, poring over the tax code, calls, letters on imposing stationery, etc, and I thought, "No. I'm going to cave in." And did. People talk about the way the taxed decide to move to states where there is little or no state tax. Your experience and mine suggests that at least some people are not so much moved by the dollar value they will save living elsewhere, as by a desire to get away from the larcenous arrogance of the tax agency. I am FI, and could afford California taxes, but I am old and bristly and will not put up with that treatment again. I will never move there, never invest there, and never do business in that state.
