What's the legal definition of "resident" in NYC?

https://www.tax.ny.gov/pit/file/nonresident-faqs.htm

I would guess your board is talking about wanting board members to be primary residents. That this is the property they list on their tax returns, and legal documents as their home.

"In general, your domicile is your permanent and primary residence that you intend to return to and/or remain in after being away (for example, on vacation, business assignments, educational leave, or military assignment). Residence means a place of abode."

A "resident" sleeps in the building more than half of all the days in a year, and that's backed up by declaring the building their primary residence on their income taxes, a declaration that could be double-checked by looking at their credit-card spending/use of commuting cards.

(Which is what my accountant told me the IRS does if they want to check that you're not fraudulently declaring residency; if you say you are a primary resident of a no-income-tax state such as Texas, but your Metrocard/Omni says you're in NY nine months a year, they'll bust you.)

>your Metrocard/Omni says

uh, what?

The way to get around that would be to buy your metrocard and refill with cash.

Even better, a way to appear more like a resident of Texas is to use your Omni account in the summer and the rest of the year use cash metrocard
But every year we willingly give up more and more of our independence and privacy to technology. If not already, the IRS will dial into anyone's iphone cookies and location trackers

As to the original question, I think the original intent was to have board members that are physically in the building month after month for

A) Any mechanical issues that come up that need to be addressed are more likely to receive board urgency if they individually are experiencing the issue as well
(example: boiler not producing enough hot water, flakey elevator,etc)
B) Attending monthly board meetings (Zoom has made this somewhat mute)

Dont underestimate the importance of point A

I would look for the board (or building) to discuss a definition of "resident" , vote on it, and amend. It should at least require you to be a shareholder(and spouse).

Without a definition or change of term, couldnt renters run for the board as a resident? :)

@truth: " It should at least require you to be a shareholder(and spouse)."

We had an individual in my building who wanted to run for the board: the live-in boyfriend of an owner. Board said no go, he wasn't a shareholder. She could run, he couldn't. Potential candidates must be shareholders.

(Anybody remember the story about the rich guy who lived outside NYC and scrupulously kept records (in the days before electronic records!) of just when his limo crossed the city line, so was able to successfully defend himself against a NYC taxation case -- tens of millions of dollars, if I remember correctly, which, once he won, he gave to NYC Parks.)

@Aaron - yup
Julian H. Robertson, Jr.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/03/19/tax-me-if-you-can

(and spouse) should be (or shareholder spouse)
and
moot not mute! lol

@aaron
Indeed....While 1 member wouldnt do much harm, I dont really see a building's board ever electing a non shareholder.

Non-shareholders get elected all the time.

Our building's by-laws specifically state that board members need not be shareholders. We've had a few non-shareholder spouses on the board, though I imagine the provision from 1925 and its modern off-spring were/are intended to allow the developer to stack the board with its cronies? I have been urging the "residents" of my building to step up for board duty because part of my motivation for getting back on the board was to displace one of the two board members who no longer live in the building and have no plans to live in the building ever again. They've had their apartments on and off the market for years and for whatever reason just won't take the loss. I wanted them off the board because their short-term focus is not want I want for the building. They will always vote to band-aid major problems rather than spending the money to fix them with the hope that they will be gone when the real bill comes due. Same with the IO mortgage, etc.

btw - we got audited by NYS when we gave up on the fiction that we were ever going to live in NYC. We paid NYS and NYC taxes from 2011-2018 despite never coming close to the 180-day threshold. The audit was crazy, and even after they combed through credit card statements, electricity bills, cell phone bills, EZ pass statements and even veterinary records, all of which showed minimal presence in NY, they still tried to argue that we were NY residents. We had to escalate it to the cusp of litigation, and when someone in NYS department of finance with the requisite authority finally looked at it, they gave up without so much as an "oops." I cannot imagine how non-lawyers navigate that crazy.

Alas I live in both California and New York so I think I’m paying a lot of taxes no matter where I declare residency!

@truth: ".While 1 member wouldnt do much harm,... "

That is one big camel nose poking into your tent. In general, I'd say that co-ops should organize themselves so that only resident (defined very strictly) shareholders can be board members. There may be a case where the shareholder is a non-resident corporation (we have one of those), and so an authorized representative is designated, if they want to run. But that should be a very limited population: if you're going to permit one 'authorized representative' of a shareholder, then you're going to have all sorts of people coming out from under rocks (spouses, boy/girl-friends, offspring) who want to exert control.

@30: Other than to get skilled professionals on the board, I'm not coming up with any compelling reasons for having non-shareholders on the board (corporate case above excepted). Any other reasons I'm missing?

Sponsor

@30: Thank you. Yes, of course. I was thinking of co-ops where the sponsor was no longer active, but we've seen in threads here that there are sponsors with long-term attachments to converted buildings.