Pennsylvania doc fees going up 300% in january

Just an fyi to those in my area. This is a very large increase. About $10/mo on my 24 month Toyota pickup deals.

From the attached snipet, its not a state mandated fee, just sounds like the state with this, allows dealers to hide profit. Sounds like you need to get ur dealer(s) to agree to hold the fee the same, or only take a moderate increase.

Good luck. When ever a state makes a limit on maximum fees, you know the dealers will use it to the fullest. After all who do you think lobbied for this law?

Pa had one of the lowest doc fees at $120 before or $141 out of state

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At the end of the day they all buy the cars for the same amount, a doc fee is a small part of the whole picture, to super-hackers like everyone on this site it shouldn’t change the deals in PA by that much

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The dealer you work with has to give you a break. Its not like the actual state fees went up considerably so even you know its a scam. It appears pa.gov didn’t even right the article?

Remember you are the broker. Pick your dealers you send the deals to.

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Still less than $599 Some of these Jersey dealers charge :roll_eyes:

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Ive paid $799 here in FL (and others have seen as high as $999…or $1049 even?).

Of course, we just need a bigger MSRP discount to make up for it. IMO, it all comes out in the wash. The dealer has a total minimum profit in mind and how we get there doesn’t always matter all that much.

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What’s noteable is that the doc fee isn’t taxes, which I believe is unusual. This seems inappropriate since doc fees are just moving numbers around. Cars sold in California aren’t 700 dollars cheaper than Florida due to the capped doc fee in CA. This just let’s car dealerships move numbers around to reduce he total tax paid.

On a related note, I can’t find any coverage of this online. I can’t help but think it’s not great democracy that these kind of things are done based on sizeable financial contributions and there is zero explanation of how this change came about. This is a financial giveaway to car dealerships through reduced taxes on new cars.

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Exactly my thoughts! Its a game to re-pay the dealers commission/lobby for their support.

My Toyota guy said they haven’t decided if they’re going to raise it yet. My bmw guy said they def are going to, go figure…

Not a huge deal to me, I’ll just factor it into any offer I make.

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Old post, but how has this panned out? I just noticed the huge cap increase for PA on a quote I saw today.

Maybe a better question is how was the increase determined? It says it’s based off the Federal Consumer Price Index, which from what I googled rose 2.0% from 2018 to 2019. How does that translate to a $270% increase in the doc fee?

Just curious…

389 is way more in line with its neighboring states. MD being 299 and NJ being an average of 400-700.

Probably will end up going towards bailing-out teacher’s pension fund or funding state troopers overtime like most everything in this stat.

Doc fee goes to the dealer’s P&L.

Out in Virginia we usually pay $699-$999! Man it sucks to lease out here.

Doc fees went up. Not much more to say about it.