Question,

When you're buying a car at a local dealership, you have to pay taxes based on what county you live in right??? What happens if your license is from out of town (for those who recently moved) and don't necessarily have a permanent address to determine what county you live in? Are you still entitled to pay taxes on your new vehicle? Or is it more like local dealer can't charge me taxes because they don't have another dealership in the state that my driver license is from? (Kinda like how Amazon or Dell work where they don't charge you taxes because they don't offer retail stores in my state...)

Also, what difference does it make if you were trading in a car and pay taxes only on the difference in valve vs. paying full taxes on the new vehicle?

Thanks

 

sales tax is based on what the state taxes/laws are, not county.

 

Also, if you buy out of state, you do not pay sales tax to the state that you purchased in, but you will have to pay it when you register the car in your home state, based on the price paid shown on the bill of sale.

And yes, you only pay sales tax on the difference between your trade in and price of the new car.

 

Well here in ga, different counties have different tax rates... anywhere between 6-8% on automobiles. So we actually pay different rates based on where you live.

Unfortunately my county pays the least so i'm somewhat okay on that.

 

The part I'm questioning is... how is the state going to realize that this car was purchased new in other state??

for example, my license is for North Carolina and I'm buying it in Georgia. If I were to take my car to Charlotte, NC to register, how will they know if I didn't pay taxes on my vehicle? Do they have this in system? When I first moved to Charlotte, I didn't pay taxes on my current car. Could it be because they figured out I already paid taxes at other states before moving to NC?

 

So SOMETIMES it can be beneficial to trade-in car at a place where I'm buying a car so I can save on taxes? huh? Despite their low trade-in value...

 

That's not universal. In MD and DC it's full tax on the new car and then the trade gets taken out.