An update to this original thread I started well over a year ago.
After almost TWO years from the original mailing, I have finally won and received a check from NJ for my sales tax refund.
Victory!
But this involved much more paperwork and time back-n-forth than I’d have cared for.
The phone conference wasn’t that good, and it became clear to me that the VERY people in the audit and appeal department in charge of making the final binding decision had no clue about car lease rules for taxes in the state of NJ. Two people on the phone, and the lady insisted that I should have had a monthly tax value in my lease. I had to explain to her that NJ doesn’t do it that way. You have to pay the entire tax up front, either as a due upon signing value or built into the capital cost of the vehicle (which is how it was done in my case).
After my appeal phone conference ended, I had to quote paragraphs from their own source material:
And I cited the proper sources, told them I was in fact correct, and wrote that denying my case would be unjust based on their OWN Dept of Taxation guidelines.
They then asked for: all my chase bank statements for 39 months showing lease was paid (never mind I already gave them a letter from Infiniti saying the lease was paid in full, all obligations met, and vehicle was returned with nothing more due). They wanted 39 months of payment statements from Infiniti, 39 months of my Chase account payments, they wanted DMV proof of CA when car registered here in CA (they already had that), and proof from Infiniti that I in fact had paid tax to CA once I moved here - which was in the Infiniti monthly statements after I moved.
The phone conference itself was about 1.5 hrs long, and gathering all the info they wanted, copy/pasting, making jpeg images of it all, then making it into one long pdf file, etc etc took no less than 5 hrs of my time.
From the time this process started 2 yrs ago, I kid you not that I have probably spent no less than 15-20 hrs dealing with this.
All for $442 and some cents. Not worth my personal time. But for me, it was the principal of the matter. The rules clearly state that I was owed a sales tax refund for the time the vehicle left NJ permanently. So I want my money back from the government.
Almost 2 yrs and I won. Check cashed and cleared!