Not a lot inventory for the hybrid in Texas, so I decided to look out of state, and potentially have one shipped by the end of the year.
This week some friends invited us to Thanksgiving in Southern California. My wife floated the idea of flying in, getting the Carnival that week, and driving back. I don’t have any experience buying or leasing cars in California- are there any sales tax implications here? Any general advice for buying/leasing in Southern California?
California charges a “use” tax, so technically if you’re an out of state buyer who will use the vehicle in Texas, then the dealership will need to be equipped with the paperwork to remit the taxes accordingly for Texas. There will be no use tax for California.
Also of note, some CA dealers require the registration tags for the other state to be on the vehicle before they release it to the out of state buyer (talk to @djrabbi to learn more). So you may need to pay for the car now, get the TX tags on the car sent to you, fly to CA, then drive the car with TX registration plates home.
If the dealership isn’t equipped to do that, then you can’t execute the fancy plan to fly in and drive away.
But as a gut check, I really don’t like the idea of what you’re doing. Since your family is likely in tow and there are too many potential “haha sucker you’re here now with only one way back home… and the terms have changed” dealer shenanigans that could happen.
Dealers mostly said if I come physically to pick up, I will be charged CA tax. They need a BOL showing car being shipped out of state. This is my experience at least
YMMV but when I looked for a Telluride (they were relatively scarce then) the California folks on the Telluride forums couldn’t find anything in state at sticker, which was the best price in Q3 2021. They were buying from places like Colorado.
More Texas folks were buying in state than California people IIRC.
This is a good point. I’m not looking for much risk on a family vacation.
Was hoping to avoid CA tax, and pay TX tax instead. Wanted to avoid needing a rental car for my few days in California. The difference in tax doesn’t help save money though.
This is what I’m likely going to do. Wanted to see if there was an opportunity to get a decent deal in a locale with a reasonable amount of inventory.
There seems to be a decent amount of inventory in the southern California area right now, with advertised discounts to MSRP. There is decent inventory closer to Texas, to be sure.
Thank you everyone for your replies. It is looking like it may be more trouble than it’s worth- shipping to Texas looks simpler
