Hi Everyone. Well, after 15 years the RV-Dreams Community Forum is coming to an end. Since it began in August 2005, we've had 58 Million page views, 124,000 posts, and we've spent about $15,000 to keep this valuable resource for RVers free and open. But since we are now off the road and have settled down for the next chapter of our lives, we are taking the Forum down effective June 30, 2021. It has been a tough decision, but it is now time.
We want to thank all of our members for their participation and input over the years, and we want to especially thank those that have acted as Moderators for us during our amazing journey living and traveling in our RV and growing the RV-Dreams Family. We will be forever proud to have been founders of this Forum and to have been supported by such a wonderful community. Thank you all!!
I know I already asked a scenario question about Nevada but now here goes the one for SD.
We are current residents of Montana and would purchase our 5th wheel while still residents here and we would probably register it here as well since we plan to buy it about 6months before becoming full timers. We already own our truck here.
So, if we then decide to become full time residents of SD, do we then have to pay the 3% tax on our truck and trailer when we register there?
Thanks again for eveyrone's help! My eyes feel like they're bugging out of my head with all of the info to research!
If you can prove you paid more then 3 percent to some other state then no you don't pay it. We moved a truck and fifth wheel from PA to SD and didn't pay there is paper work you will need though.
Just curious, why would you move residency to South Dakota from Montana? I have been researching where is the best state for us and all I am getting is more confused. Spent several hours on the Escapees forum this week and still do not know what to do!! ??????? My eyes are "bugging out" ALSO!!!! Know how you feel Felicia. After all the research to date, I don't have a clue yet!! Read on Escapees that SD BlueCross BlueShield will not write health insurance policies on fulltimers.
Mallo, do you know which state is best for Federal retirees??
Help, I have some really important decisions to make in the next few weeks.
Steve, Why in the world would you tell them you are living in an RV fulltime? That is the purpose of establishing residency in a state. That is where you "live".
i'm a complete newbie at this so I'll tell you how i have been researching. I looked at the following things--
income tax, health ins, vehicle/5th wheel ins, vehicle/5th wheel registration, sales tax and hunting tags (HIGHLY important to the hubby!)
Based on our situation, I came up with a chart and I determined that it would be $2295 per year cheaper to call SD home over MT. SD does have the higher one time fee of $1770 for our trailer and truck but in the long run, the yearly cost savings will be well worth it.
If I'm overlooking a yearly fee, please someone tell me, thank you
Thank you both for your replies. My concern is what happens if we are in another state and have a medical claim and BCBS of South Dakota starts asking a bunch of questions. I guess the same would apply if we keep North Carolina as our residence. We like our doctors here and would like to have annual check-ups in NC. Would BCBS of South Dakota go along with this???? If we want to keep our NC doctors had we better keep NC as our residence??
We plan to travel the country for several years and not stay in any state for months at a time. We have no plans to settle down in any state in the near future.
Steve, just a word of caution about planning to use BCBS of South Dakota. We're SD residents and planned to get health insurance from BCBS of South Dakota. Our only address in SD was our mailing address at Alternative Resources in Sioux Falls. BCBS quickly saw that address and denied coverage to us. They were not interested in insuring full time RVers. They wanted a physical residence, renters lease, home owner tax bill, power bill, etc to prove we really were living in SD. We were able to get coverage from Dakota Care which has worked well, but they don't have the extensive out of state network of doctors that we were hoping to get from BCBS. We might have been able to play some other games to establish a more physical address to meet the BCBS requirement but didn't go down that path.
Your mileage (and that of others) with BCBS may be different, but wanted you to be aware.
Steve, I think the answer anytime you have an issue in another state, is that you are traveling on vacation and got sick / hurt, etc. I don't have any problems because I have Medicaid, but my wife has Golden Rule, out of Wisconsin, and she has had multiple issues in many states over the last 5 years and there have never been any questions as to coverage out of state. If there are restrictions with the provider you are looking at, then you have to find one that offers national coverage. I don't think you have to say you are living in a RV, you want the coverage because you do a lot of traveling. Good luck,
-- Edited by Luvglass on Wednesday 24th of August 2011 09:35:04 PM
Just a point to clarify my earlier post. BCBS of SD has their own residency requirements. You need to meet those requirements before they will add you to their SD insurance pool. Since all we had in South Dakota was our mail forwarding service address and our SD dirvers licenses, we were not able to meet BCBS of SD residency requirements. They were looking for proof of a physical residence before they would issue a policy. If we owned or rented a house there, it likely would not have been a problem. There are some cheap homes in the back country of SD but we didn't pursue that.
Fred is correct, to everyone we do business with, we just travel around alot. Dr visits out of state has not been a problem. Dakota Care did ask that the preventitive care we received (annual physical, etc) be done in the Dakota's, but my wife had several office visits out of state as we travelled.
So, just be sure you can get your new health insurance ahead of time.
