This article is a part of our new sequence, Currents, which examines how speedy advances in expertise are reworking our lives.

Two months in the past, Jeff Sheu, a personal fairness govt, moved from San Francisco, the place he had lived for shut to 20 years, to Summerlin, a Las Vegas suburb. During the stay-at-home interval of the pandemic, he realized he not wanted to be in a metropolis the place property was costly, taxes had been excessive, and his high quality of life, now that he was married with a small baby, had modified.

And with vaccinations out there and enterprise journey resuming, he may reside someplace he favored so long as he may get on a airplane for work.

“I love California, but over time the cost of living got exorbitantly high,” mentioned Mr. Sheu, who was born and raised in that state and went to the University of California, Berkeley. “I grew apart from California.”

Moving out of a metropolis for more room within the suburbs is a fairly widespread objective. It typically marks a maturation level for Americans with younger kids, who worth well-regarded colleges over a nightlife scene.

But given the state Mr. Sheu had left and the excessive compensation from his work, he was involved that his departure wouldn’t go easily. As the managing director of a personal fairness agency, he’s precisely the kind of excessive earner California doesn’t need to lose. When folks in his tax bracket go away, the state is probably going to audit them to make sure that they actually have left.

With the May 17 tax submitting deadline approaching, individuals who have moved to one other state or are working extra remotely want to be further vigilant with their tax paperwork. For Mr. Sheu, that entails an app on his smartphone that makes use of location providers to monitor him on a regular basis. What he’s sacrificing in privateness, he’s gaining in peace of thoughts, realizing he can be in a position to present precisely when and the place he was in a specific state, ought to California’s tax authority come after him.

Tax-starved states are none too joyful to see huge taxpayers go away. Enter the necessity to monitor meticulously the place you’re on a regular basis.

“As part of the move, there’s a checklist of things to do, like changing your voter registration,” Mr. Sheu mentioned from Atlanta (having been in Tampa, Fla., and Philadelphia within the earlier 36 hours, when he had been touring for work). “Then there’s tracking your days. You can use Excel, but if I get an inquiry from the tax board, it’s just in Excel. They could argue I fat-fingered something. But I’m never apart from my phone. It feels to me like a pretty undebatable way to track where I am.”

Tax apps like TaxChicken — which Mr. Sheu makes use of — and TaxDay and Monaeo had been created years in the past with a totally different objective in thoughts: to assist largely prosperous retirees keep away from a tax burden after they returned to their second dwelling in a high-tax state. But because the pandemic despatched folks dwelling, and within the course of freed them from being in an workplace, these apps have change into related for professionals who need to work wherever they need to reside.

These apps function on a subscription mannequin and are modestly priced. TaxChicken, for instance, prices $34.99 a 12 months. After a free 90-day trial, TaxDay costs customers $9.99 a month. Monaeo is geared extra towards excessive earners and gives extra choices for its service, charging $99 a month or $999 a 12 months.

“We’ve seen a fourfold increase in our app without any advertising in the past year,” mentioned Jonathan Mariner, founder and president of TaxDay, who was himself audited when he labored for Major League Baseball in New York however lived in Florida. “When people are concerned about privacy, I say you probably have a dozen apps on your phone that are tracking you, and you don’t even know it.”

People who use the apps perceive their location can be tracked, and the apps acknowledge of their privateness coverage statements what information is and isn’t used. Monaeo makes a level of describing how the info is cataloged — metropolis, state and nation, however with out particular areas. It additionally says upfront that it doesn’t share any information. (All three of the apps are vigilant about that.)

While every tax app has totally different ranges of precision and options to add supporting paperwork, all of them fulfill the fundamental want to show your location to a tax authority. When it comes time to file taxes, customers obtain studies detailing the place they labored with various levels of specificity, from a easy day rely to extra detailed location data.

“Over the past year, it’s becoming a contentious issue between states,” mentioned Chester Spatt, professor of finance on the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University. “The question is what does it mean to have your employment be in another state in the virtual world? In the physical office world, it was easy.”

With a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} at stake, states in want of income will not be going to let the cash go with out a combat. “This has the potential to become as messy as you can envision it,” mentioned Dustin Grizzle, a tax associate at MGO, an accounting agency. “States are going to say, ‘Hey you’re just using Covid to give you the ability to work remotely.’”

One factor is obvious: the pandemic has, actually, prolonged a majority of these tax debates to middle-income earners who would really like to reside elsewhere. At the middle of the talk is a magic quantity: 183 days — half of the 12 months, plus a day — which is the period of time most states use to decide if a individual has been elsewhere for tax functions. (There are exceptions: Ohio requires residents to reside exterior of the state for under 5 months.)

Residency, although, is one thing you may have to declare; it’s not one thing you’ll be able to set up by touring. For many staff, the difficulty can be the place their employer says their workplace is.

David R. Cohen, a lawyer who focuses on sophisticated litigation circumstances, had been touring from his dwelling in Ohio for many years. During the pandemic, he rented a place in Naples, Fla., along with his spouse and realized there was no purpose to return to Cleveland within the winter. After renting, he purchased a home in Naples a few months in the past.

“Covid proved everyone could work remotely,” mentioned Mr. Cohen, who makes use of TaxChicken. “It was at that point that I began to think about residency down here.”

His incentives went properly past the climate: He reasoned that almost all of his circumstances concerned a number of jurisdictions, so he was both touring or figuring out of his dwelling anyway.

That form of shift has some states worried. There is at the moment a tax dispute between New Hampshire and Massachusetts that might find yourself in entrance of the Supreme Court. The central query: Where are folks working for tax functions when they aren’t allowed to go into an workplace in one other state?

When the pandemic began, Massachusetts issued steerage, saying for those who usually labored in an workplace in that state, you’d have to proceed paying revenue tax there, even for those who had been working from dwelling. New Hampshire challenged this by filing a lawsuit.

“There’s a strong argument that the pandemic should change things,” mentioned Eric Bronnenkant, head of tax at Betterment, the monetary advising app. “But one of the things I’m concerned about is if the Supreme Court comes down on the side of Massachusetts, other states will say the Supreme Court gave their approval. That will make remote-worker taxation more complex.”