When taking our Jeep Liberty in for maintenance last week, a crack in our frame where the tow hitch attaches was discovered.  After consulting with several body shops, hitch specialists, tow specialists, friends, the Oliver travel trailer factory, etc. - we came to the conclusion that she's just not hefty enough to tow us full time. So while it was repairable, we'd just continue to have the problem .. and that would always keep us on edge.

So, we started looking at other options for a tow vehicle. We ended up at CarMax to look at a lot of stuff at once, and settled on a red Toyota Tundra. And they gave us a great price to buy our Jeep (even with the disclosed frame issue). 

 

When it came to do the paperwork, and we explained that we'd be registering in our domicile state of South Dakota - we were told:

1) California charges 8.75% sales tax anyway - and on the full purchase price (no allowance for trade in)

2) California will only issue a 24 hr temp 'pass' to get out of the state, no temp tags or any such thing. 

 

*shock*

 When we've bought other vehicles - the sales tax for that state was always waived and we just paid the 3% South Dakota exise tax (part of the reason we picked SD).  Apparently, that's not a universal thing - and some states DO charge sales tax, regardless of where you are registering.  Apparently, California and Arizona do.  Texas, Tennessee and Nevada - for sure - don't. 

CarMax was awesome in understanding our situation and offered to transfer our vehicle to their Las Vegas office so we could buy it there and just pay the SD tax.  However, with a Jeep that we didn't trust to tow us that far - and that it would take an extra week to transfer it up - we felt a bit stranded.  Sure, we could have stayed at our overpriced 'RV Resort' for another week, drove to Vegas with just the Jeep, done the transfer, drove back to San Diego and hitched up..   the expenses and time of doing that just added up for us.  So, we factored in the CA sales tax into our buying decision and made a sizeable donation to California's bankrupt economy. Grrrr.  Thankfully, SD will waive their 3% tax since we paid tax in CA. 

 

So.. lesson learned. Be very careful which states you buy new vehicles/RVs in.

 

 - Cherie 

 

 

Weak. That must be a new thing because we bought our Monaco in Cali, they delivered to Nevada, and we paid the Texas sales tax. That seems like a real dumb way to NOT get people to buy in California.

 

Sucks, but congrats on the new ride :)

 

 

--kev

That's pretty awful.  Hopefully the new truck will be pleasant enough to erase some of the sting!