Lease deal presented to me

You pay tax on only the difference between the selling price of the new vehicle minus the trade in value. In your example you would only pay tax on $1K.

In the original deal, the tax was shown as over $3K which is totally wrong unless you were paying tax on over $50K. The dealer is trying to hide the fact he is giving much less than $44K for the trade.

It also appears you are rolling negative equity from the trade into the deal. That negative equity will also get taxed.