Hi all, I live in Texas and plan on leasing a car sometime this year. Late next year, I’ll probably be moving to North Carolina for school, but I have no idea how taxes on leases work when moving states. Unfortunately, I also can’t wait to lease/buy a car until I move to NC because I don’t have a car right now (and living in Houston without a car is a nightmare).
I know that in TX I’ll have to pay the taxes on the full selling price of the vehicle, but I don’t think NC does that - pretty sure they just do taxes on monthly payments.
Since I’ll probably spend the majority of my lease in NC, what can I do (if anything) to avoid getting screwed on taxes?
Don’t forget you’ll have personal property tax on your car in NC as well if I’m not mistaken. The lease tax there is super cheap like SC but then they charge you more each year for that.
Yeah I’m lost bc I haven’t even mentioned other criteria - I just wanted to know if anyone knew how taxes worked when moving states. Sure, I guess budget is relevant if I wanted to know the exact numbers, but that wasn’t really what I was trying to get.
Like if I’m being for real, $400/500 is my ideal budget - especially since I’m under 25 and insurance is a b. Technically, I could afford $600-700/mo but honestly why would I do that?
Not super easy to figure out what has tax credits. From my experience (brokers and more seasoned LHers, please correct me here):
A particular model(s) will have tax credits, such as the BMW i4. The dealer will be upfront about this
The dealer has a “bank” of tax credits from the lender that they can decide when to use. They’ll initially tell you they don’t have tax credits but later might come back and say they can do the deal with tax credits etc. Really hard to know when they really to see what others are offering in TX that has credits since paying all of the tax can really make/break a lease deal.
Check the post in “Share Deals” where someone scored a decent deal on a Jeep Wrangler 4XE. With current interest rates you’re going to almost HAVE to target an EV or PHEV to get a big rebate to make everything make financial sense. Hyundai Ioniq6, VW ID.4 and Audi etron Q4 are good candidates. Check the forums since you’ll need to stack several incentives for a solid deal, or just pay a broker much less headache and worth the price.
Hey, thanks! This was actually very helpful. Since I know I’m leaving Texas relatively soon (but not soon enough), should I pay the taxes on the vehicle upfront or roll them into the monthly payments? I read somewhere here about someone doing the latter and getting kinda screwed because they were now paying double taxes (taxes rolled into the lease payment, then taxes on the lease payments). But honestly, I got no clue
Ah I did see that deal! It was really impressive. I’ve def noticed that EV are kinda the way to go for tax credits, so that’s what I’ve been leaning towards. I’ll check out those other threads to see if I notice any other incentives.
Also, do you have any recs for brokers? I’m starting to get to the point where I’m thinking of just hiring one and letting them deal with all this.
This would apply to any part of the lease you don’t pay upfront. That includes taxes, reg, acq, doc, etc
Also keep in mind that NC has property tax based on the book value of the vehicle AFAIK. So the higher the MSRP, the more property tax you’ll pay in NC.
You’ll probably need to decide on a brand first, since most brokers have relationships with particular dealers. In TX, @IAC for BMW hands-down. I’ve used Clutch for Jeep in the past (they worked with a dealer in Louisiana and had the car shipped to me for a few hundred), and know 3-4 people that used Clutch on Jeep 4XE deals as well. Not sure on Hyundai/Kia or Audi.
