Question 1

What is a state residency audit and why should I worry about it?

Accepted Answer

A state residency audit is an examination by a state tax authority — typically your former state of residency and domicile — to determine whether you actually severed your connections to the state or whether you remain taxable by the state. The state's interest is straightforward: a resident usually pays state income tax on worldwide income, while a non-resident pays only on income sourced to that state. A domiciliary can pay tax on their entire wealth — including estate tax at death, capital gains regardless of source, and in some states, wealth-based assessments — whereas a non-domiciliary pays nothing on these. The financial gap between the two is often enormous for high-income individuals. The reason to take this seriously is that the burden of proof falls on you, not the state. A state can claim you remained a resident based on circumstantial evidence — a maintained driver's license, a vacation home, frequent visits to family — and you must prove otherwise. The dispute can cover multiple tax years, accumulate penalties and interest, and result in tax bills that run into six or seven figures. California, New York, and increasingly Washington pursue these audits aggressively. The audits are sophisticated, time-consuming, and often initiated years after the move when reconstructing your record is most difficult. Exodus Cleric exists because the difference between a successful residency claim and a failed one usually comes down to documentation — and that documentation must be built day by day, not assembled in panic when an audit notice arrives.

Question 2

What separates Exodus Cleric from other residency tracking apps?

Accepted Answer

Other applications in this category are day counters. They record where you are and produce a tally. Exodus Cleric does this as well, but the day count is the starting point, not the product. What separates Exodus Cleric is the analysis layer. Every state applies a different residency test. California uses a plurality standard that examines which state you spent the most days in, regardless of whether you crossed any specific threshold. New York combines a 183-day test with a place-of-abode analysis that considers whether you maintained a permanent home in the state. Florida and Texas have no income tax but operate as safe harbors only if your domicile is genuinely established there. Each state has different rules, different thresholds, and different evidentiary expectations. Exodus Cleric understands these rules and applies them to your specific transition. The product tells you not just where you have been, but what your record means under the rules that apply to you. It identifies the gaps that create liability. It monitors plurality status against the state you are leaving. It generates alerts when your position is approaching a meaningful threshold. The competition tracks days. Exodus Cleric tracks defensibility. A second difference: Exodus Cleric is built for the relationship between you and your tax advisor. The analysis outputs, advisor access tools, and documentation features are designed for a CPA or attorney to review and act on. Other tools produce data. Exodus Cleric produces a record your advisor can stand behind.

Question 3

When should I start tracking my residency transition?

Accepted Answer

The day you decide to make the change. Not the day you sign a lease in your new state. Not the day you transfer your driver's license. Not the day you file your first non-resident return. The reason is that residency audits look backward over multiple years and examine the entirety of your transition. An auditor reviewing your residency change in 2027 will want to understand your intent, your actions, and your day count starting from the moment your transition began. Records assembled contemporaneously — as the days happen — carry significantly more evidentiary weight than records reconstructed from memory, credit card statements, and calendar entries pulled together months or years later. If you have already moved and have not been tracking, start now and use Exodus Cleric's catch-up feature to fill in past days as accurately as you can. Imperfect records started late are still better than no records, and a year of contemporaneous logging strengthens an otherwise reconstructed record substantially. If you are planning a move that has not yet happened, begin tracking your current state days now. Establishing a baseline of where you spend time before the move provides important context for the change you are about to make. A useful guideline: if a residency audit is likely to be material to your financial position, the cost of starting your record early is trivial compared to the expense of fighting without a strong record. The stakes are high. Preparation is your only meaningful defense.

Question 4

How long should I keep my residency records?

Accepted Answer

The conservative answer is at least seven years from the date of the relevant tax filing. The more realistic answer for high-exposure individuals is longer. State tax authorities have varying statutes of limitations for residency audits. California typically allows four years from the filing date but extends to indefinite if no return was filed or if the state alleges fraud. New York generally allows three years but can extend to six in cases of substantial omission. Other states vary, and the limitations period restarts in certain circumstances such as filing an amended return. Beyond the statute of limitations, practical considerations argue for longer retention. Audits initiated in the final months of the limitations period can drag on for years. Appeals can extend the timeline further. If your residency change involved significant assets — sale of a primary residence, exercise of stock options, business sale proceeds — the relevant records may need to be defensible long after the standard retention period. Exodus Cleric retains your record for the duration of your subscription and for thirty days following cancellation. For permanent retention, the Executive tier includes a document repository designed for long-term storage. Regardless of which tier you use, we recommend exporting your annual record at year end and storing it independently — both as a backup and as a contemporaneous artifact you can produce if needed.

Question 5

What is a residency exam actually like?

Accepted Answer

A residency exam typically begins with a written notice from the state tax authority, often arriving one to three years after the tax year in question. The notice requests documentation supporting your residency claim and lists specific items the state wants to see — typically including a calendar of your days, supporting receipts, lease or property records, utility bills, vehicle registration, voter registration, professional and social affiliations, and credit card or bank statements. The state's examiner is looking for what attorneys call indicia of residency — the everyday markers that suggest where your life is actually centered. They will compare what you claim with what your records show. If your day count places you in your new state but your credit card statements show frequent travel back to your former state, your medical providers remain in your former state, your social club membership is in your former state, and your children attend school in your former state, the examiner will draw conclusions from that pattern. The exam can take six months to two years depending on complexity. The taxpayer typically responds in writing through their CPA or attorney. Document requests can be extensive. The examiner may request interviews. If the state determines you remained a resident, they will issue an assessment for back taxes, penalties, and interest — which you can accept, negotiate, or appeal. The states that pursue these audits most aggressively use different approaches. California focuses heavily on plurality — they want to see that your claimed new state has clearly more of your time and life than California does. New York focuses on the 183-day count combined with whether you maintained a permanent place of abode in the state. Washington, which recently introduced a domicile-based capital gains tax, is developing its enforcement playbook now and is increasingly looking at former residents who relocated to bypass the tax. The single best preparation for a residency exam is the contemporaneous record — the documentation built day by day as your transition unfolded. Records reconstructed after an audit notice arrives are usable but carry less weight. The cleric prepares before the examination, not during it.

Question 6

How is Exodus Cleric different from a spreadsheet or calendar?

Accepted Answer

A spreadsheet or calendar can record where you were on a given day. Exodus Cleric does this as well, but with three categories of advantage that compound over time. The first is the analysis layer. A spreadsheet shows you that you spent 142 days in California and 168 days in Georgia. Exodus Cleric tells you what that means under California's plurality test, where your safety margin sits, what gaps exist in your record, when you should be concerned, and what you should do about it. The interpretation is not optional in a residency strategy — it is the core of the strategy. The second is contemporaneous timestamping. An entry made in Exodus Cleric on a given day carries a server-side timestamp showing when the entry was created. A spreadsheet edited months later cannot demonstrate when each row was actually entered. In an audit context, contemporaneous records carry meaningfully more evidentiary weight than records assembled retrospectively. The third is corroboration. Exodus Cleric structures your record to incorporate supporting evidence — photos, receipts, location pins, document uploads — alongside each day. A spreadsheet treats your day count as a self-attestation. Exodus Cleric treats it as one element of a corroborated record. When an examiner asks how you know you were in Florida on a given Tuesday, having a structured response with multiple evidence types is materially different from having a spreadsheet cell. A spreadsheet can substitute for Exodus Cleric in the same way a rowboat can substitute for a cruise vessel. Both float. Only one is built for the rough waters ahead. The state revenue agency technology tools are powerful and robust. Shouldn't you have a powerful technology tool on your side too?

Question 7

Is my data secure and private?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Data security and privacy are central to how Exodus Cleric is built, and the architecture reflects that priority. Your data is encrypted in transit and at rest using industry-standard encryption. Authentication uses secure tokens stored on your device's secure enclave. The application infrastructure uses commercial-grade cloud services with row-level security ensuring that your records are accessible only to you and to anyone you explicitly authorize through the advisor sharing portal. For users on the Foundation tier, your data stays within the Exodus Cleric system. No external AI processing occurs. Your documents, calendar entries, and analysis are not sent to third-party AI services. This is by design — Foundation exists for users who want disciplined tracking without external data processing. For Professional and Executive tiers that include AI document review, all AI processing uses the commercial Anthropic API with strict data handling protocols. Your data is processed for the specific analysis you request and is not used to train AI models. Personally identifying information is not included in AI prompts. Anthropic's commercial API retention policy retains processing logs for seven days, after which they are deleted. Account deletion is available at any time and removes your data across all systems within thirty days, in compliance with the California Consumer Privacy Act and other applicable privacy regulations. Read our complete privacy policy for full details on data handling, retention, and your rights.

Question 8

Does Exodus Cleric replace my tax attorney or CPA?

Accepted Answer

No. Exodus Cleric is not a substitute for qualified tax counsel and is not designed to provide legal or tax advice. Your residency strategy, your specific tax positions, and any communication with state tax authorities should be handled by a qualified professional advisor who knows your full financial situation. What Exodus Cleric does is make your advisor's work more effective and less time-consuming. When your advisor reviews your residency position, they need a complete and reliable record of your days, your supporting documentation, and your analyzed status under applicable state rules. Without that record, they spend significant billable time reconstructing the basic facts before they can do the work that actually requires their judgment. With that record, they can focus on strategy. Think of Exodus Cleric the way you would think of a well-organized filing system for a complex tax matter. The filing system does not replace your accountant. It makes your accountant more effective. The advisor sharing portal in Professional and Executive tiers is built specifically to give your CPA or attorney clean access to your record without requiring them to learn a new system or wait for you to email them documents. If you do not currently have a tax advisor and you are contemplating a meaningful residency transition, finding one should be a higher priority than subscribing to Exodus Cleric. The product supports a professional relationship — it does not substitute for one.

Question 9

What happens if I'm audited?

Accepted Answer

If you receive a residency audit notice from a state tax authority, the first action is to contact your tax attorney or CPA. Do not respond to the audit notice directly without professional guidance. Your advisor will handle communication with the state on your behalf and will guide your responses through what is typically a multi-month or multi-year process. What Exodus Cleric provides at this point is the foundation of your defense. Your contemporaneous record of days, your supporting documentation, your analyzed plurality status, and the alerts and adjustments you made along the way constitute the core evidence of your residency claim. The advisor portal allows you to give your attorney secure read-only access to your complete record, which they can review and reference throughout the audit process. Exodus Cleric does not represent you in an audit and does not communicate with state tax authorities on your behalf. Those functions belong to your professional advisor. What we ensure is that when your advisor needs the underlying record, it exists, it is organized, and it is defensible.

Question 10

Can my CPA or attorney access my records?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Exodus Cleric includes an advisor sharing portal designed for exactly this purpose. You generate a secure, time-limited access link from your account. The link grants read-only access to your residency record — your day count, analysis, plurality status, gaps, alerts, and supporting documentation — without giving your advisor administrative control over your account. Your advisor does not need to create an Exodus Cleric account or learn the application. They simply open the link and review the record in a clean, organized interface designed for professional review. The link can be revoked at any time. You control which records are visible. You can generate separate links for different advisors if you work with both a CPA and a tax attorney. The portal is specifically designed to eliminate the friction of sharing residency records — no forwarded receipts, no emails with attachments, no shoebox of paper documents arriving before tax season.

Question 11

How does automatic GPS tracking work — and why does it capture more on some days than others?

Accepted Answer

When you stay in one place all day, tracking is simple. Exodus Cleric records three snapshots — morning, afternoon, and just before midnight — confirming you were in the same state. That's all an auditor needs to see for a straightforward day, and it's all the app stores. Travel days are different, and travel is exactly where your record matters most. When the app detects that you have crossed into a new state, it stores an additional capture to mark the transition. Drive from Nevada to California for a meeting and back? You get five records: your three daily snapshots plus one when you entered California and one when you returned. That timeline of movement is precisely what a state tax authority wants to see for a day where you were on the road. If your phone is off during a flight — which is common — the app captures your location before you board and again when you land and power back on. You will see two records in different states with nothing in between. That is the signal to log a Travel Day: tap the TRAVEL tab, add your flight details (airline, flight number, departure and arrival times), and the itinerary fills in the story your phone could not capture mid-flight. The result is a record that is lean on static days and detailed on travel days — exactly the opposite of what a manual log tends to produce, where people remember to note interesting travel but forget to document the quiet days at home that are equally important to your plurality count.

Question 12

What is the difference between domicile and residency?

Accepted Answer

The terms are often used interchangeably but they are technically distinct, and the distinction matters in residency law. Domicile is your true, fixed, and permanent home — the place you intend to return to whenever you are away. You can have only one domicile at a time. Domicile is established through a combination of physical presence and intent to remain indefinitely. Changing your domicile requires both moving to a new place and demonstrating intent to make that new place your permanent home. Residency is a broader concept and varies by state. A state can claim you as a resident based on different criteria — number of days present in the state, maintenance of a permanent place of abode in the state, or other specific tests defined by state law. You can be a resident of a state without being domiciled there, and you can be domiciled in a state without being a resident under that state's specific tax definition. For most state tax purposes, what matters is the state's specific definition of resident — which often combines elements of domicile and physical presence. California's residency test, for example, examines whether you are domiciled in California or whether you are in California for other than a temporary or transitory purpose. New York looks at domicile and at the statutory residency test based on days and abode. The practical implication is that successfully changing your tax residency requires more than physical relocation. It requires changing your domicile — establishing your new state as your true permanent home — and being able to demonstrate that change with evidence. Exodus Cleric tracks the physical presence side of this equation. The intent and life-centering elements are documented through the supporting evidence you accumulate over time.

Question 13

Can I just be a nomad or split time across multiple states?

Accepted Answer

Both strategies sound appealing and both create more risk than they appear to. The nomad strategy — claiming residency nowhere or in a low-tax state while actually living everywhere — fails for most US persons because every state you spend meaningful time in can claim you as a resident or domicile under its own rules. If you spend 70 days in California, 60 days in New York, 80 days in Florida, and the rest of the year traveling internationally, both California and New York can argue against your residency change — California through its plurality test, New York through its domicile analysis. Your absence from any single state for most of the year does not establish residency elsewhere — it leaves you exposed in multiple states simultaneously. Compounding this, the absence of a clear domicile elsewhere makes it easier for your former state of residence to argue that you never actually left. If you sold your California home and now live in hotels and rentals across several states without establishing a true permanent home anywhere, California's position becomes that your domicile remained California by default. The burden of proving otherwise falls on you, and the absence of a destination domicile is hard to overcome. Splitting time across multiple states presents related challenges. If you genuinely live half the year in Texas and half in California, both states have meaningful residency claims against you. California's plurality test will evaluate whether you spent more days in California than any other state — and if Texas and California are roughly equal, the analysis becomes complex and disputable. The strategies that actually work involve establishing a clear primary domicile in your destination state and structuring your life to demonstrate that primacy — primary home, primary medical providers, primary professional and social affiliations, primary registered vehicles and voter registration, plus a day count that meaningfully favors the new state. If your situation genuinely involves significant time in multiple states, this is a conversation to have with your tax attorney before making the change. Exodus Cleric tracks all of your states accurately, which becomes more important — not less — when your situation is multi-jurisdictional.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Prepared Mind Wins the Audit.