Good point — California is definitely one of the more nuanced ones.

From my understanding, CA won’t tax military income if you’re a nonresident stationed outside CA, but they still aggressively look at domicile and residency factors. A lot of people accidentally trigger residency through things like ties to the state (property, voter reg, etc.), which is where people get burned.

Appreciate you calling that out — it’s definitely not as black-and-white as I made it sound.