The Home of Record is the state from which the service is entered. Declared state of residence for tax residency can be same or something different, as long as the military member has met the criteria for establishing residency in a new state. Changing the state of residency is done through military disbursing or personnel.
Base legal office usually has some info, and more senior officers usually pass on how it all works.
Tours of duty in other states than tax state are simply in transient non-resident military personnel mode, and do not make the military member a tax resident. The military member can get a driver's license and register cars in the duty state without becoming a tax resident.
My HOR was GA and remained my state of tax residency until I had a tour in FL. I then registered to vote in FL, got a driver's license and when I bought a new car, got Florida plates. I changed my state of tax residence to FL. My HOR remained GA. I transferred to other states on PCS orders, always voting absentee in FL. My driver's license and auto registration eventually became other states over the years, which is fine. It's not unknown for active duty to have a current license from one state, car registration from another, while stationed in yet another state.
My HOR remained GA throughout my career. Once I left active duty, I then became a resident for tax purposes where I actually lived, and registered to vote in my new home state.
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This.
As pointed out as a service member moves to different duty stations they are permitted to change residency to a place where they are based, normally through something such as a driver’s license. This applies to the spouse as well. So, although I live in NY and work in NJ I pay TX state income tax.
It can be goofy and raise eyebrows. At one point I had a Texas driver’s license with a KY address that was actually in TN (Ft Campbell is goofy this way), but we lived in NY and my TN registered car listed our NY address. I was once pulled over and this resulted in some head scratching.
“Your car is registered in TN but your registration address is in NY.”
“Yes sir. My wife was based at Ft Campbell.”
“But that’s in Kentucky.”
“Yes sir.”
“Then why is your car registered in TN when the address on your TX license is KY?”
“Because our house was in TN.”
“Then why isn’t your address in TN???”
“Because the post office was in KY.”
“Then why isn’t your… oh… never mind…”
The trooper threw up his arms and let me go with a warning,
But… as
@usna1985 pointed out there might be other considerations. Also, some states exempt military residents based out of state from state and local income tax.
Also be advised that some insurance companies don’t understand this. I left USAA for a little while but eventually returned for this reason.