I was getting a title for my 1975 914 2.0l. The lady asks how much I bought it for, I said $1800. She says, the lowest average retail is $16,400. When she said that I thing my face turned into a question mark. She looks at me like, sorry, it's what the system says.
It would cost me alsmost the same amount of what I payed for the car just to drive it????
I have no idea who came up with these prices
anybody else expirienced this?
Here you can see the averages; I hope these prices are accurate when I go to sell mine

Wow, I guess I shouldn't have complained that I needed an official appraisal when I did my transfer.

I don't know what the 'average' price has to do with anything. When I buy toothpaste, I pay taxes on the price I paid (even if it's on sale!), not the average price of toothpaste.

Well that's what you get for living in Taxachusetts.

Same thing happened to me several years ago.....

http://www.914world.com/bbs2/index.php?sho...c=77706&hl=

Me too. It sucks

My parents still live in Mass and my dad ran into this several years ago. He bought a 1987 635CSI that had been fixed after a bad wreck. Car was only $5K but charged him tax on $12K

Holy Sh!t.....talk about pillaging the citizenry

A car that flips a lot is a good earner for our tax happy state

John

Wow there is someplace that is worst than CA when it comes to registration......

Ironic isn't it? From the Boston Tea Party to Taxachusetts.

My cars are always $200. The woman at the counter never blinks and I pay the $12 sales tax. Just got antique plates for my '71. $75 for lifetime registration and no inspection needed now or ever. I did up my insurance to $14,500 since that is the highest I could go without an appraisal so it raised my yearly cost for full coverage to $140/year

Luckily we don't have anything silly like - non op fees

They only go by the nada book here if you don't have a bill of sale or if the purchase price was not written in on the title?

If you had a bill of sale from the seller would that make a difference? Just curious, that is nuts!

FWIW When I registered my 914 in 2010 they priced it at $7500. Actual purchase price makes no difference.

When I lived in Md. I paid no tax on my LE since I inherited it. When I moved back to Va., my birth state & where the car was originally purchased, I had to re-register the car & here they charged me tax based on the original sale price. Since it was my Dad's car, I have all the paperwork, including the bill of sale. The fact that my Pop bought the car here in Va., back in 1974, & had already paid tax on it once before did not seem to matter. The fact that the car was 33 yrs. old & I inherited it did not matter either, so I wound up paying tax based on the original sale price, AGAIN. One of the few things I like about the Md. tax system over the Va. tax system.

These prices are NADA
I have the bill of sale.

Just got the title on the orange 75 here in Texas. Showed bill of sale for $2500. The TTL came to $261.

I just did my collectors tags a few months ago.
Sales tax was ~7.7% and they took what my BOS said which was $1000 for a 71 914.

So I paid ~$75 sales tax and $175 for tags for 5 years and no smog test required.

I had to also pay a $100 penalty for not registering the car right when I got it. (I waited 4 years....)
They didnt care that I told them "It came in boxes and on a car hauler".

Copied this from the State Web Site.

Appears the only way around it is if you buy the car from a Dealer
registered with the State


Book Value - Tax Assessed on Non-Dealer Sales

The amount of sales/use tax assessed on casual sales (non-dealer sales) is based on the higher amount of:

the actual amount paid for the vehicle; or
the clean trade-in value of the vehicle adjusted by either the high mileage adjustment (decreases value) or the low mileage adjustment (increases value).

The Registry of Motor Vehicles makes the proper adjustment for mileage at the time of registration. Adjustments to value based on the mechanical or structural condition of the motor vehicle are not provided for under current sales/use tax law. For example, if the car engine or doors need replacing, no adjustment will be made to the book value of the vehicle.

I was thinking the same thing.

Same problem in Texas. Just bought a used Explorer and they went by low book and not bill of sale. Only if a dealer submits the sale will they use actual sales price. No exceptions the lady said.

Also, when you buy a junk car here it has to be registered even when not drivable. Just add license plates when it's ready...

Texas here too...they go by my bill of sale every time in Harris county. Never have had a problem.

And in NC you'll pay personal property tax each year on it, after you've paid the sales tax.

Here in OR, yeah, zip, zero, nada...

Same here in Va., unless you have "antique" plates

Holy crapamoli! I never heard of that, DMV looking at value to register.

CA has TONS of really messed up laws, so I hope they never get wind of that tax scam.

Here, I just walk into my local AAA office, give them a receipt for the car, and pay the registration fee. If I can convince the seller to put $1 as the sales price, my title fee is based on that. Actually, I guess it is a sales tax. The annual registration fee is based on the reported sales price and I think several voo doo factors known only to some inner circle DMV Satanic cult.

The taxes I pay are about $13 a year for my 914... I'm not really complaining.

before i got down to reading this comment- that is exactly what i was thinking!! sounds like you need another tea party there is boston harbor(last time i was there it looked to me like you already did(color of the water in the harbor)) -

oh, BTW - South Carolina has a law on sales tax that limits all sales to no more than $300
personal property tax is another matter, but as car depreciates down it reduces fast, i pay $25 on the 914 -

I bought my 914 for $2000, and paid tax on that amount when i titled it. you guys are getting RIPPED OFF!! time to or move across the boarder!!

I guess I've never had much of problem since I seem to have bought my 914s
near the market values. However, the yearly excise tax is $6.75 for my -6.

Good ole Taxachusetts gets you coming and going. So you buy a car for $1500 and they tax you on the retail value. Then while you are restoring it you get to pay sales tax on all the parts you buy. Only saving grace with my 914 when I was in Mass was the excise tax was very low. I believe it was around $15. The strangest thing about the excise tax was I had a 1991 Saab 900 and that was valued much higher than any other fully restored cars that my parents have, and it was a pile.

Nothing political here, but I would be talking to may state representative and telling him/her that i didn't like the way they were screwing me over. These folks are very approachable, but find out where they will be speaking (like a local service club (Rotary, Kiwanis, ect) and tell your story at the question/answer part of the presentation. Might cost you $15-20 to attend the meeting, but its the way you change government.

They kind of do the same thing here in WA state, but it's like getting a 10K discount on that value. I always go in with a photo of the car; the WORST photo I can take and ask, "would you pay $XXXX for that car?? With a photo of a crappy parts car, they become a lot more reasonable.

In this state, most of the licensing offices are private agents who only collect a flat fee for every registration. You get to know what offices are power-tripping hard @$$es and which ones are occupied by actual thinking, reasonable humans. I patronize the later. . .

Might I suggest getting the Antique tags, if you didn't already. I got the title transferred for my gold 72 and that cost me $10 (thanks Dad!). The nice lady at the Tax Assessor suggested I put Antique tags on it b/c there is no registration renewal for 5 years and it does not ever have to be inspected. I think they were $95. Yay Texas!!

Actually there is something you can do. You can file for an abatement. The registry has the forms.

You can try for an abatement, but I copied this directly from the Mass.gov web site.
It states it pretty clearly.


" Adjustments to value based on the mechanical or structural condition of the motor vehicle are not provided for under current sales/use tax law."

good luck trying

Not true. You can specify it as non operable, and get a title only. I did that with my 68 912.

PA tries real hard to get the tax for the actual sale price. They don't go for the $100 sale price anymore.

MA estimate of 914 value is ridiculous.

I think it depends where you go in PA. I use wiggins auto tags. They're a title and tag service company. They charge about $15-25 for their service (filling out the right paperwork, mailing in, ect), but they take care of the title and tags exactly the way I want. They never give me an issue about my "$200" cars and it seems the state rubber stamps the paperwork they send in for me.

I do have a backup bill of sale for $200 but they never seem to need it.

In Connecticut they looked at the Maryland registration form, reviewed the eBay receipt and sent me over to the emissions center. No emission test was done, they just took the VIN number and checked on the internet to see if it was stolen.

That out of the way, I went back to motor vehicle dept. And paid the tax on the actual sales price.

Guess what, the ugly license plate for antique cars, the one with the dorky car drawing, is not necessary any more. My plate is white with black lettering. On the bottom it says 'classic car'.

Perhaps you haven't had the joyful experience of a letter from the DMV asking for documented verification of the purchase price. I have seen this. Undervalue the car too much and you could very well see such a letter in your mailbox. Furthermore, the purchase price is NOT part of the annual registration fee ....... They use a predetermined value for that.

The Cap'n

Agreed.

Another is to file a lawsuit in MA Superior Court. It's cheap and you can do it without a lawyer. Lots of pro se information on the net. After filing, go to the papers and give them the story. You WILL get attention and you CAN do it.

As I get older, I'm not taking this gov't abuse anymore. I'm in the middle of litigation against my own town for another bs matter.

So in Massachusetts, if you buy an item at the dollar store, do they tax you based on what that item costs at Walmart?

Massachusett's Used car law =


Book Value - Tax Assessed on Non-Dealer Sales

The amount of sales/use tax assessed on casual sales (non-dealer sales) is based on the higher amount of:
•the actual amount paid for the vehicle; or
•the clean trade-in value of the vehicle adjusted by either the high mileage adjustment (decreases value) or the low mileage adjustment (increases value).

The Registry of Motor Vehicles makes the proper adjustment for mileage at the time of registration. Adjustments to value based on the mechanical or structural condition of the motor vehicle are not provided for under current sales/use tax law. For example, if the car engine or doors need replacing, no adjustment will be made to the book value of the vehicle

Tell them the thing has 400,000 miles. That second paragraph is such a ripoff.

Right. Registered = title. License plates later.