Texas: State of Leasing Despair

lol we are in Dallas and I don’t think I’ve seen any CA plates. It’s rare at least. Drivers here are nuts anyway.

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Paper plates as far as the eye can see

lol, I’m living in New Delhi, TX, I know what you’re saying…

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Montana plates around the DFW area on Bentleys/Ferraris/etc.

[quote=“Brons2, post:40, topic:629007”]So here is how tax credits work.

Let’s say you lease a 50K car. In order to originate the lease you must pay 6.25% tax on the full 50K. (Technically and legally the lessor should pay it, but they always just pass the cost to the lessee). So you (the lessee) need to cough up $3125 to the State of Texas in order to register the vehicle…
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Had no clue this was a thing that was even possible. I’m assuming since luxury makes generally lease more that they would be more inclined to offer something like this?

Not necessarily only exclusive to luxury makes. I listen to a radio show Saturday morning on AM570 and the Honda dealer that has a spot on the show states fairly often that they have sales tax credits available on some models.

Supposedly they are not allowed to state that in a print/online ad but can verbally state it on the radio/etc. At least that’s what I think I’ve heard them say before on air. I don’t know if this is something legal or something that the lender doesn’t allow to be advertised.

I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that it is the special six months right now that happens every two years where you can in fact complain to your two Texas representatives and they can actually do something.

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Any auto brand that offers leases in Texas will also offer tax credits. (I think Tesla and Rivian MAY be exceptions to this rule, but that’s because they do not operate true dealerships in the state. Maybe somebody can chime in and confirm this.)

However, luxury car dealers tend to originate more leases than other car brands so they may have more tax credits to throw around.

The power that you have is in the information. Now that you know that tax credits are available, it’s just a matter of asking for them to be applied to your deal. Pretty please…?

Great insight. Thanks for sharing!

Planning to do this but was curious as to why Texas is even the way it is. What was the incentive for doing it how we do it?

Not having a state income tax, for one…

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The dealer can only apply a sales tax credit if it’s being offered by the lender. For example, if Honda Financial is only offering sales tax credits on the Civic and CRV, then you cannot get a sales tax credit on the Accord. It’s not quite as easy as asking “pretty please.” The lender determines what model(s) they want to offer them on.

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