Hey Hackrs!
My fiance visited a BMW dealership the other day (we live in the city of Chicago), and was given several lease worksheets on some cars they were looking at/discussed. I have posted a photo of one of those worksheets below.
I am trying to figure out if I am missing something here when it comes to calculating the taxes. From my research/understanding, the city of Chicago has a 9.5% Vehicle Sales Tax, and then another 9% Chicago Lease Tax on top of that. I agree with the worksheet up until the point where it calculates “Payment w/Illinois Tax” (note - if you try to perform the calculations, the RV is a $125 less due to the fact that this is a demo with 1,000 miles).
So the base payment is calculated correctly ($437.97 + 121.76 = 559.73). However, when they calculate the “Payment w/Illinois Tax” it appears that they used 14.3% ($639.71 / $559.73 = 1.1428)? I was under the impression the $559.73 should be multiplied by 1.095 (9.5%), which would result in a “Payment w/Illinois Tax” of $612.90. Then use the $612.90 in order to calculate the 9% Chicago Lease Tax ($612.90 * 1.09 = $668.06) to arrive at the “Total Lease Payment”, which would be $668.06… You can see my confused writing on the worksheet around the Tax calculations…
As mentioned above, my fiance brought home 5 of these worksheets for 5 different vehicles, and each one uses between 14.2-14.3% for the Sales Tax calculation. Every one of these “Total Lease Payments” is ~$30 higher than the calculation I am getting when I run the number by hand/thru my excel lease calc (unless I am dead wrong)…
I am really hoping someone can shine some light on the situation for me!
Thank you so much Hackrs!
