Re: New tax scam?
The car I bought was a 5 year old Mercury Grand Marquis, it was advertised on Craigslist as "Old Merc - $5,000 O.B.O." I found it looking for outboards. It was in the wrong category, listed at a time when gas just shot over $4/gal, and had been sitting for 4 years after a death in the family. It had sat in a falling down garage, had a dead battery, 4 flat tires, and damage to both bumper covers.
The brakes were seized up, and the belts were rusted to the pulleys.
The guy had taken ill and the car was just left to sit till after he passed away. They sold the old guy's house and had to get the car out asap.
When I looked at it, the owner had a bad attitude and gave me a speech about how irresponsible it was to drive a big car like that, and that if her dad had any sense, he'd have bought a foreign car.
All in all the car just needed basic maintenance and some elbow grease to clean it up. But it was 3 hours away from home and had to be towed. I made an offer of $2000 and after a week, we ended up agreeing on $3k. When I made the offer, I really didn't care if I got it or not, and the seller's attitude didn't help much either. Fixing the car didn't take a lot of money, just my time to clean it up and some new rubber. I am a former dealership mechanic and I already had two parts cars which could donate all the parts that I got for near nothing from a friends body shop. (I already drove another car of the same year too). The car had only 9,200 miles on it, but had been driven by a 90+ year old man with poor eyesight, he apparently had trouble getting in and out of the concrete garage that it was in, all four bumper corners were torn and the building had matching paint marks. The drivers door edge was pretty battered up too from hitting the wall in the garage.
I don't know how they come to their value on the car, the price I get on it is only about $7,000 in good running condition. If I had to pay someone to do the work I did to the car, I'd have had a $5,000 bill or more. My buddy that painted the two bumper covers told me to refinish and repaint both bumper covers and to buff out the whole car would be $2,600 in itself, the tires were $165 each for top of the line Michelins, the belts and hoses were $320, I aligned the front end, which would be over $200 for a complete alignment at the dealer, and a full tune up and service would have been well over $800. The spark plugs were $14 each at Ford. The car was covered in bird and tree dirt, the exhaust was rusted out from sitting so long and the battery had frozen and leaked all over the battery tray and rotted out the lower tray and core support bracket. It looks new now, but I have over 200 hours in it and still am not done but I do not count my labor in it since I intend to keep it. If it were a car bought to resell, it would not have been worth the work.
I've also had my old car, a 60,000 mile version of the same car but fully loaded listed for sale for 4 months, it's in near mint shape and have had no takers at $3000, I even ran an ad at $1200 and got no serious buyers, so how can they tell me it's worth $16K? Both cars book the same. Larger cars simply do no sell now with gas being so high, even though these get 25 MPG or better.
They are doing the same thing on my two Ranger trucks and my Dodge van. I paid $800 for two Ford Ranger pickups, a 95 and 97, both were running but had emissions issues which I fixed. I bought them both from a local dealer that couldn't fix the problems. Repairs cost me about $10. The Dodge van is a 1997, has 40,320 miles and came to me for $300 with bad trans and damaged dash board after the radio was ripped out while down for service. It was a state vehicle bought at auction, no one bid because it needed to be towed and the wheels were locked up from sitting. I knew the guy that drove it, it had sat for years after a motor pool mechanic tried to fix the trans and failed miserably. I towed it home and rebuilt the trans and replaced the brakes and it's like a new truck now. That was 2 years ago, they are now saying that I need to pay the sales tax on that one too, they say it's worth $11,200. It's a bare bones, no air work truck which has a home done paint job to cover up the highway service paint job, it came to me with flat black paint all over covering up the highway logo and numbers. It was also painted a florescent yellow color. I painted it myself for the cost of the paint at work. It only took me about $600 to make it a good work truck but there's no way anyone would pay $11,200 for it. I'd be hard pressed to get $600 for it these days with the cost of gas. It only gets about 10 mpg, so it won't be a real hot seller, especially without air.
I intend to fight this 100%, there's no way their getting sales tax over an above the actual sale. I didn't falsify any reciepts, only one was a private sale, the two Rangers were a dealer sale with the dealer charging the tax, and the van was a goverment auction, where I was charged tax on the documented sale.
Any vehicle sale here requires a signed bill of sale and a signed title, the bill of sale is a state form in which both parties swear to the purchase price and finality of the sale. Its more so to establish liability in the event of a problem or law suit. (Vehicles sold under $2500 are automatically considered AS IS).
I filed that form when I transfered the title, that was with the DMV, not Div of Taxation.
Sales tax law states that "Sales tax is to be collected on all non essential items for the full purchase price of said item" The full purchase price is the amount paid or the amount of money that has changed hands, no more, no less.
It's bad enough they tax the same item twice, I am sure tax was paid on this car when it was bought new, and they collect tax on it every time it's sold again. The part that gets me is that they are pushing this on every vehicle that I've bought over the past two years. Every one was bought cheap, I only buy my vehicles if they are super cheap, there's no way I'd pay full price for any vehicle.
It goes right back to a case where they would also have to charge sales tax on the full price of a sale item rather than the sale price in every store. It would be the same thing.
