Justin Malone

Justin was raised in California and has spent the last five years living abroad, working from nearly every continent. Like most Americans overseas, he kept hitting the same wall: he had left the country, but the country had not left him. California still counted him a resident, the IRS still expected filings, and banks still demanded a US address. He came away convinced that where you choose to live and where a state gets to tax you should be two different questions.

With a background in accounting, he engineered his exit before boarding the plane. He landed at Tampa International in the morning with two suitcases. Thirty minutes at the DMV got him a Florida license, his Declaration of Domicile was filed and his voter registration completed the same day, and by 6 pm he was wheels-up out of Orlando, having cut the ties his former state uses to keep a claim on people who leave.

Your Tax Base is that playbook, productized. Justin leads the company and its research on state tax residency, Florida domicile, and the banking, mail, and compliance problems Americans abroad face.

We met at Money20/20 Europe: one of us living the expat problem from the inside, the other from a family of accountants and CPAs. The advice traded that week became a one-day Florida domicile playbook, and the playbook became Your Tax Base.