Car Collectors & Personal Property Tax

Sucks, doesn't it?
Personal or Excise Tax - seems the only way to get rid of it is by ballot.

 

Am not by any means a collector, but in the state of MO, we pay personal prop. tax on each car we own yearly. I live outside STL and
it may not be as expensive but still, it sucks to pay over and over again for things you've been taxed for in the past.

 

Virginia had this as well...I'm not sure if they still do. It was supposed to be phased out but I'm not sure if it ever did.

 

As far as I know it's still in the phase out process... When Gilmore ran for gov, his campaign line was "No More Car Tax!" There were 50' wide signs hanging from buildings in Springfield, right over I95 that said that. Of course the Repubs love that stuff, so he got elected with no problem. Well, once they started reducing the car tax they realized that they were coming up short in their budget.. UMMMM DUH. So the process keeps getting changed, and now whatever 6 years later there's still a car tax, although it did get reduced. I agree though.. it's insane that we have to pay taxes to buy something with money that's already been taxed, then continue to pay taxes on it. Not sure how that stuff became status quo... but I'm in FL now so who cares what VA does

-R

 

In TX there is no personal property tax, though we do have real estate property tax... and businesses have property tax. But in all cases, I agree... property tax is just plain wrong. We have friends who have had to move out of their life-long homes because land values went up, driving their property taxes up, until they were higher than their income. And these were young people... consider those who have retired... the homes they worked their lives to pay for suck them dry. Ridiculous.

But then again, income tax is also stupid... why would the government want to discourage income? And then we get these convoluted set of rules to encourage this or that and adjust so that low-income don't pay and so on.

IMO, we should just tax consumption and the spending of money... let people make money and save for their future tax-free! And make healthy food and medicine tax-free... people should be able to eat. Then the people that can afford to spend money are naturally taxed more (as they can afford it). Those who cannot afford the taxes, naturally spend less (and thus pay less taxes).

Hey, how'd I get up on this soap box? Who put that there? {jumps off}

 

This is why a lot of people have secondary residences in Florida, where you only have to spend (I think) 2 weeks out of the year for it to count. No State income tax - at least there didn't used to be...

 

Bingo. plus there's the homestead exemption... and apparently lots of other good tax benefits. Don't think I'll ever sell my home here, even if I move eslewhere.

-R

 

Property tax is a tax designed to make people use their property for the good of society. By taxing property, the rich cannot stand idly by and just live off the fat of the land, they must put the land to use, and by doing so, this benefits the people who produced and consumed products based on putting that property into use.

One could argue that collections of {Cars, jewlry, watches,...} should not be treated like collections of acreage {Estates, forests, gardens, lakes}, however, the various legislatures have taken the point of view that the easiest way to account for 'stuff' is by fair market value, and tax stuff accordingly.

So, yes it sucks,
But, it is the price of living in a safe and orderly society.

 

Another form of taxing cars as personal property is practiced here in Colorado. License renewal fees scale according to the value of the car, as defined in some administrative list. For the Ferrari, it comes to many hundreds of dollars each renewal.

 

No, it's not the price of living in a safe and orderly society, it's the price you pay because politicians have found that they can stay in power by pitting people against people. There are some people that feel that they deserve what you have worked for, even if they have not, and the politicians have figured out how to screw them and you, by taxing your property, over and over, and over again, and wasting most of the money in red tape, while redistributing only enough to keep the slackers in today's society under their thumbs. It never ceases to amaze me how some people feel they have a right to what someone else has worked for. I have never begrudged anyone for anything, and I do not feel that I ever will. I just know that I am working myself hard in my business, and continuing with graduate education, and whatever else I'm doing at the time to make life for my family comfortable, and I do have a problem with people stealing what I have worked so hard for.

 

I just purchased a business that has been paid for with outside financing.
The business has about 200k in equipment. My accountant told me I will
have to pay 2000.00 a year in property tax. I have the receipt of the
equipment from the original owner. At the time he paid the state sales
tax of 8.25% for the purchase of the property. Since the tax has been
already paid why do I have to pay it every year.

 

If you renew your tabs in the Seattle area, you will get hit with a 1.4% tax to pay for the new monorail. Assessed on a 6-figured Ferrari, it'll be over a thousand each year (painful for an Enzo). Glad I'm out of the collection zone.

They're now having problems with people registering cars out of area and monorail ridership estimates were way too optimistic.

 

I don't know what happened to the phase-out of the car tax in Virginia, but we seem to be stuck in "mostly phased out."

If you own a vintage car, you're in luck. Since I guess the state can't spend a lot of time trying to figure out the value of each vintage car, they assign a really low value. Virginia values my 1968 Ferrari at $100; so I paid $4.40 in tax last year. . ..

 

Nonsense. In the same towns where people's homes are being taxed $10-50K per year, it is against the law to run a business or otherwise use that property to make a profit. That land value went up based on demand, NOT based on its productivity.

Usage is a much more sensible model. Tax them on the water they must use to keep all that landscaping alive. Tax them on the landfill space they use for all the grass they clip and bag. Even charge them for police and fire service based on value of the home that is being protected. But don't scale up those value-based taxes to completely fund your government!! That's not fair.

Rather, fund government based on people's consumption / usage of the spoils of that society that the government supports. That is fair... and automatically adjusting... without taking from people what they've worked all their lives to earn.

 

Here in Michigan my annual license tab renewal for my old 87 TR about $590 !! I can't stomach the idea of that! License plate costs used to be based on vehicle weight..and this makes total sense as weight is what creates wear and tear on public roads. But then "they" got the idea that more money can be squeezed out of people by using the MSRP value of the vehicle. This creates costs out of proportion to road wear and tear, penalizing those people who have expensive cars. My TR will not see more than about 4k miles a year and yet the tab costs are more the double my daily driver Caddy STS and pickup combined.

Here's what I do: When renewal is due, I get tabs for the truck and the caddy, but not the TR. After a week or so I then transfer the plate from the caddy to the TR. Then wait for another week or so and buy a new plate for the caddy. They don't like this practice, but it's legal. The reason I wait a week before getting new plates for the caddy is I don't want to arouse any animosity or be obvious.

This is an excellent subject and maybe needs it's now thread?

 

Hey, there's an idea!!

What's the chance that we can convince Ferrari to stop producing cars... instead, have them just "restore" old cars. So, that 360 spider is delivered as a restored 246GTS. You pay $100 for the old car and $175K for the restoration of the $100 car.

 

Excellent. They threw that Bum Gray Davis out of the State of California for Spending the Tax Payers money as if it was a Credit Card without limits and than imposing the Car Tax. It is the governments idea that they know what to do with our income better than we do. This is about redistribution, not a "Safe and Orderly Society."

 

Oh Gawd, where do I start? Others have hit the nail on the head with their responses so I will give mine. What a pathetic, socialist viewpoint. Mitch, so you mean to tell me that if I work my A off for an Enzo, pay income taxes on that income (tax #1), pay sales tax on the purchase (tax #2), I should have to pay property tax (tax #3) on that same asset--MY asset--annually? So the government's "purpose" for imposing their very lucrative continuity program is so that my automobile is "used for the good of society?" Wrong. I should be free and clear to use that automobile for the good of me, not society. Remember the "pursuit of happiness" part? Well this is it.

This is not China, and we don't want to to model our great country after communist or socialist forms of government (despite incessant wicked attempts from the likes of Hitlary & Co.) Those governments dissuade incentive and basic individual freedoms like owning property of various forms. A property tax essentially has the same result: you never own the property. You never own anything you pay for every year.

To all those compassionate liberal types out there... if you subscribe to Mitch's school of thought and happen to live in a state with zero property tax, there is a solution. Never fear, there is a way to get that guilt off your back and put all your property to use for the good of society: get out your checkbook and stroke a voluntary check to your state department of revenue. Let's hear how many have done that.

 

Well, in my town in NJ, fully 2/3rds of my (outrageous) property taxes go to the public schools. While I don't have children in school, I'm not sure I should rant about the "have nots" getting all my money in this case. The last 1/3rd goes to road maintenance, police, fire department, municipal bull****, etc. Surely pretty wasteful stuff sometimes but hardly a case of the slackers in society coming to take all my hard-earned money. Fact is, if they do away with property taxes, the money just comes out of my other pocket somehow if I expect my roads to be cleared, fires put out, police to come in an emergency, etc.

A consumption tax is the ultimate in regression as well as a pretty poor model for encouraging people to buy expensive things. Surely even the most diehard anti-liberal (what is one of these liberals that everyone seems to hate so much?) can see that. The richest pay the least on a percentage basis under that scheme. Personally, under such an arrangement, I could easily imagine owning a weekend home in Europe and spending my money there. Maybe working a 3 weeks on (living in a basement apartment, on Raman noodles), 1 week off deal at work to enjoy it properly. Can you say "unintended consequences"?

Those who apparently think all their hard-earned tax dollars are used to give DVD players to crackheads would do well to actually look at the federal budget. It sucks in many ways, but it's not exactly a wholesale income redistribution project either, IMHO.

 

Poor soul. I'll give you $125 for that crummy ol' car.

 

Haven't lived in Virginia for a few years, but they used to love toplay games with valuation. For example, in the early 90s, Fairfax County (a suburb of DC) assessed my brand new 911 at significantly over sticker - that is, they taxed it as though it were a more expensive model. I filed a protest with lots of documentation, and of course it was denied. Those folks were crooks.

As for taxes & spending, I can't tell much difference between the major US political parties on the subject anymore.

 

I'm with you 100% on that one.