I am just about to buy a mini from a mini dealership in New York, and I live in California. But here is the twist, I am a texas resident and I am only in CA for school. I want to register the car in texas for two reasons. A) if i register it in CA i would be considered a CA resident, which would mean I would have to pay state income tax, which I dont have to pay in TX. B) If I register it in texas, the tax is only 6.25% and I would save alot of money in comparison to california assortment of taxes and fees. Can anyone help me out on this? Thanks

 

first, welcome to MCO. See my comment in your other post.

Depending on the timing, could you swing by texas on the way back to Cali to take care of the registration. I would figure being a student you might be planning on taking delivery over christmas break or spring break depending on how far down you are on the list.

New York will issue you a 30 day "in transit" registration. Then you could get temporary plates in Texas (maybe on the road trip back), and then maybe get your perminent plates mailed out to your parents house in Texas (I presume they still live there).

But in any case, I would imagine you will need to get the MINI to texas at some point in the registration process. A call the the Texas DMV would probably help clear up the situation.

 

>>I am just about to buy a mini from a mini dealership in New York, and I live in California. But here is the twist, I am a texas resident and I am only in CA for school. I want to register the car in texas for two reasons. A) if i register it in CA i would be considered a CA resident, which would mean I would have to pay state income tax, which I dont have to pay in TX. B) If I register it in texas, the tax is only 6.25% and I would save alot of money in comparison to california assortment of taxes and fees. Can anyone help me out on this? Thanks


I am a Missouri resident living in Ohio. I am, however, going to register my car in Ohio.

I do have one truck registered in Missouri. What I would suggest doing is calling the Department of Motor vehicles in the State Capital. Ask someone there how you would get the car registered while you are living out of state. The other option is to call the DMV in the county seat of the county you are registered as living in. Start this process NOW in case you run into any problems.

Good luck.
Barb

 

Thanks for all the help. As for stopping by texas, I am actually getting the car shipped to cali due to my school/work schedual(60+hrs week). I found on the texas DOT page that if you are a student or in the military you can register a vehicle "remotly" by call the tax assors office in your county you hold residency in. But in thinking about sales taxes, I was talking to the mini dealership of hawaii, and they are selling at msrp and only charging $800 in shipping. I sent an email out to the DOT of hawaii, asking them if I could register the car in hawaii but be a texas resident with the car out of state. Only reason for this is hawaii has a 4% sales tax (how sweet is that), and I could save substancial amount of money. But I dont know if I will have problems when it comes to renewing my registration since the car will be here in the continental us. I'll keep you all posted on my replies i get back from the various department of transportations. Thanks again

 

I doubt the Hawaii angle will work, since you don't have any other way to establish residency there. So you would pay the tax in the area you claim residency. Thus, take the 6.25% from texas and be happy.

 

I found a loop hole in the texas department of transportation that said if I was a student or in the military that I could register my car as a texas car when I bought the car in another state. After a brief questionaire the woman at the DOT said she would send all the forms out to me in Cali. When she asked the make of the car I said "mini" and she said "no, I need to know the person who mfg's the car", once again I replied "mini", this type of banter went on for about 3 minutes until I told her that bmw created a new car company called "mini" (i know there is alot more to this, but texas just got thier first mini dealers recently, so they are few and far between there). Thought you all would find it entertaining. Thanks again for all the input

Blake