Boiseculture & etiquette

Idaho runs its own marketplace and its Open Enrollment runs 15 October to 15 December each year. Every national article, every federal reminder and every friend in another state will tell you the window closes in mid-January. If you follow that advice in Idaho you will miss it entirely and go a full year without marketplace coverage unless you have a qualifying life event. Put 15 December in your calendar the day you arrive.

Idaho gives you 30 days from moving to get a driver's licence or ID card — whether or not your out-of-state one has expired — and a separate 30 days to title and register your vehicle. For the second you must drive the vehicle to the DMV so an employee can inspect the VIN, which surprises people expecting a paperwork errand. Students at Idaho colleges and active-duty military and their dependents are exempt from the licence requirement.

The legislature repealed the state's vehicle inspection-and-maintenance requirement with effect from 1 July 2023, and the EPA approved removing Ada County's long-running programme — it had been in place since 1984. So Boise registration is a genuinely short errand compared with Virginia, which inspects every car annually, or Denver, which sits inside Colorado's emissions area. Do not budget time or money for a test that no longer exists.

Idaho moved to a single flat rate and House Bill 40 cut it to 5.3%, applied to Idaho taxable income above the filing threshold. There is no local income tax anywhere in Idaho, so unlike Kentucky or Ohio your payslip carries one state line and no municipal one. Idaho also charges no annual property tax on your car, which Kentucky and Virginia both do.

Idaho charges its 6% sales tax on food, which most states do not. It offsets this with a grocery credit claimed on the state income tax return, currently $155 per person, and you can instead submit receipts for the actual sales tax paid on food up to a higher cap. You have to file to get it, which means filing is worth doing even in a year you owe nothing.

Winter inversions trap cold air and particulates in the valley for days, and late-summer wildfire smoke can settle in for weeks. Both are genuinely bad for anyone with asthma or a cardiac condition, and both are invisible in any climate summary of Boise's 200-odd sunny days. Check AirNow rather than the forecast, and know that driving 15 minutes up into the foothills usually gets you above a winter inversion.