I haven’t posted about my home state for some time now, but I thank Blue Jersey for pointing out that I am still read there among a small group. When Blue Jersey sends out a heads-up, I usually get a rush of hits.
One thing I think, though, is he’s got one or two too many links to me there today. Because in one part of his post, I think he wants to link to go to a really very anti-[Governor] Christie blog, Christie Gone Wild. (Besides the solid political content, it pulls no punches on the attacks, as you can visually see there. Way beyond going “Bateman, Whitman, Fatman” over the Governor’s inability to control his weight.)
I would have rather that Jon Corzine won again, but as a mere domiciliary, I don’t get the state vote back home! One thing though, is that the recession and supposed Wall Street crisis is making it tough for Governor Christie to balance the budget, and so the state is being forced to consider spending and cutting in ways that the vested interests hadn’t bothered with in some years. (This is hardly a “clean government” Republican initiative as much as it is the simple fact that the state is running out of money, and soon won’t have any.)
A bit of trivia: if you do not maintain a residence in New Jersey, like I said, you are simply a domiciliary. I left New Jersey for Japan and no longer rent there. But I still have to file a (non-resident) New Jersey tax return! It’s true!
As the instructions for NJ1040-NR say, you must file a nonresident tax return if New Jersey is your domicile, meaning, here, a place you left if you moved overseas. For New Jersey expats, this includes a presumption (at minimum the state’s presumption) that it is the place to which you will return!
The three other rules for the nonresident domiliciary are
1. You did not maintain a permanent home in N.J. (otherwise you are a resident); and
2. You did maintain a permanent home outside of N.J. (this shows you are not a resident); and
3. You did not spend more than 30 days in New Jersey. (So you are out, out. Not kind of out, but still there.)
So the long-and-short of it is, if you came from New Jersey and are living overseas, with no residence back in the state, New Jersey still wants to see a “zero return”.
Hoofin 