My partner lived and worked in CA in the early 2000's. Moved to NYC in 2004. Had zero ties to CA after that. Switched her driver's license, voter registration, filed and paid taxes in NY, owned and operated a company in NY, had no CA bank accounts or investments, never set foot back in the state. CA still would regularly come after her about every other year and make her go through the same process of calling and sending them paperwork to convince them that she didn't live there. Her bank accounts would get frozen for weeks at a time and she's paid lawyers thousands of dollars to clear it up. That continued regularly until 2014, when we moved abroad and she closed her US bank accounts. CA probably still thinks she's a resident but now there aren't any bank accounts for them to go after.
Do you know whether she filed the right partial-year CA tax filing for the year you moved? It almost sounds like she missed a step that would "close out" the CA tax records...
My wife and I moved overseas around the same time, filing one CA non-resident/partial year filing. In subsequent years, we only filed IRS returns with the foreign earned income exclusion, etc. and had no further issues. It was the other, ongoing treasury department reporting requirements that were a pain, not taxes per se. We eventually moved back and had another CA partial-year return to start things up again.
We even used a trusted relative's CA address as our mailing address for federal tax filings and US financial accounts we kept open while abroad. We did let our CA drivers licenses lapse while getting new ones overseas.
LA did the same thing to me for 6 years. They put me into collections at some point, which somehow never showed up on my credit report (thankfully), but every single year they'd harass me about taxes, and I'd need to fax them documentation.
> Was the bank account opened in California? That may be the reason.
That shouldn't be a justification if the person doesn't actually live in the state anymore.
I have bank accounts in states I haven't lived for decades and that hasn't been any issue. Heck I even autodeposit my salary (from California) to my primary bank account in a different state, out of habit.
(It's good for credit rating to keep long-standing accounts open, so that's why I never close accounts if I move.)
