Lease-end options: 2019 VW Jetta SE + moving out of state

Ask the Hackrs Buy/Finance
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I am currently in the San Francisco Bay Area. I have a lease on a 2019 VW Jetta SE (picked up the car from Sunnyvale Volkswagen) which is due to expire in December 2021. Thanks to COVID I’ve only driven around 15000 miles on it. The residual is a touch under $14000 and I just saw yesterday that the KBB value for the car is somewhere around $21000. Have also previously been quoted around that figure by Carmax and Carvana.

Around the same time, I am planning to move to Seattle.

I had a few questions regarding my options at the end of the lease:

  1. As I understand, the options are to turn the car in or purchase it (and then potentially sell to a third party). I have seen a few threads on here regarding selling to Carmax and similar services, but is there any experience with selling directly to a VW dealer? Is that even a possibility?

  2. Suppose I do decide to take the car with me. Would it be a better decision to buy it out prior to moving or after making the move (purely from a tax perspective; ignore stuff like potentially shipping the vehicle etc.)? This could even come into consideration when deciding whether to sell to a third party.

Thanks for the help in advance! I will add to the post if I can think of anything else that I think I need an opinion on.

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  1. Yes you can, they will probably offer you less since they like money.

  2. What’s the sales tax rate of where you are in WA? And what is it where you are now?

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KBB is irrelevant. How much will carvana/carmax give you to buy the car? The only numbers that matter are the ones from people that can actually write a check.

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I’ve seen around similar numbers from Carvana and Carmax (north of $20000) as of a few weeks back. Edited the original post to reflect that.

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Sales tax rate is 10.25% in Seattle (I believe) and 9.13% here in CA. My concern is that let’s say I buy it in CA and pay the 9.13% use tax. When I take it to WA and register it there wouldn’t I be responsible for the use tax in WA as well?

Now let’s say I take it into WA and then buy it. I’d have to pay the WA use tax here, but would I be responsible for the CA tax in this case?

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If you buy the car here and register it up there you pay CA use tax and in WA a small fee but not ‘use tax’ as you now own the property.

Any financing you might have will change their taxes to reflect the new rate.