Selling Leased Car to Dealer - Sales Tax Implication?

My wife has a Range Rover that is coming up on lease end in a couple of months. Given everything I’m hearing about used car shortages, I decided to drop the VIN into a few of the instant-offers sites and see what kind of offer they’d make, Turns out the amounts offered would leave me with quite a bit of equity if I were to sell them the car.

Buy I’m struggling with understanding the best way to pull off such a transaction. If I were to purchase the car from LR Financial, I have to pay state sales tax (call it $4k) on top of the residual and remaining payments. I’d still be in the black in terms of total equity, but I’m thinking there has to be some way of compressing the transaction such that Carvana/Vroom/etc could buy the car directly from LR, thus bypassing the sales tax requirement.

Anyone have experience doing this before? Am I thinking about it the right way?

Some places will buy it direct without tax. But I don’t know the rules of Range Rover.
you can buy it, then transfer it to the dealer within 10 days and you get out of tax as well.

No one has tried this yet that I’m aware of in CA. But it’s the law.

1 Like

There’s been 1 or 2 people on here that have. I believe one posted up step by step how they made it happen/what forms to fill out/etc.

1 Like

I am in AZ, but still interested to learn the steps

It’s irrelevant if you’re in AZ. Only applies to California.

1 Like

If Chase will sell a Subaru to Vroom, Carvana, etc., they will likely do the same for JLR

2 Likes

I went through the same process recently due to differences in my buyout and dealer buyout for my daughter’s VW. Previously, problem arose when dealers refused to take cars that had previously lienholder name on the original title. You had to get the title and transfer it to your name by going to the CA DMV office and pay sales tax. By the time you receive your fresh title with no lienholder name on it, 10 day grace period to file for tax exemption is expired, meaning you had no way of getting back your sales tax. CarStub in Orange County will take care of all paperwork and they will take cars with a title that has a previous lienholder name on it. Carvana or CarMax doesn’t, but Vroom will now take cars without needing to obtain new title.

Chase does not have separate third party buyouts for JLR AFAIK, but this was their policy with Subaru so I do not believe there is any difference with LR.

What you want to do is receive trade in requests from your local JLR dealer (they can sell it CPO), other services like Carvana etc. You will not have to purchase the car with any of these services, they will (if still permitted) purchase the car from Chase for you.

You will not have to pay taxes, however you are subject to the policy of both chase (Land rover financial), and any third party (Carvana, Vroom, etc). If Chase still allows third party buyouts, you can sell your car directly as mentioned to these services, and pocket the money you have in your lease. I believe Carvana has a policy refusing lease buyouts if you are within what 60 days of lease maturity.

:chocolate_bar:

1 Like

Have you learned the process? Im am going through something similar but with Chrysler Financial (Jeep). 21k lease buyout, 30k vroom offer.

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.