mynameistory
New member
It's a bit more complicated than that, based on my experience...
If you buy a California vehicle and pick it up in California, you pay California sales tax.
If you buy a California vehicle and ship it to your home state, you pay your home state's sales tax.
Registration (title and tags) is always your home state's rates.
Please correct me if I am wrong here but this was the situation when I last bought an Internet vehicle...
Not just the state, it's down to the county/city that you register the vehicle in. That means you can buy a car in one town with a lower tax rate, but still have to pay the rate of the city you live in. The dealer has to estimate the total and include it in your financed or cash amount, and then it forwards this payment to your state's DMV. If there are any discrepancies, you have to hash it out with your local DMV when registering and getting tags. This is why most dealers that sell out of state will overestimate the amount by a hair, so that the overage goes back to the title holder. This is how it happened when I bought my truck in Portland and drive it home to LA.
(PS if you buy a vehicle outside of California, you will have to get it smogged in order to register- even if it's a brand new truck with 50-state emission compliance. Fun!)




