I bought all my cars from out of state dealers. You can usually not pay tax by having it delivered over the state line, or you can usually pay your own states tax directly to the dealer. I don't know why you would get a NY tag though.

They are not issuing NY tag to me. But they said that they have to collect the California sales tax and registration fee first before they can ship the car. I just want to make sure i will not be taxed again when i go to DMV in California. Are they suppose to do that?

Watch out NY will screw you. Are you a resident of NY or CA?

Here is the way it works in California when you buy an out of state car...

You pay the tax when you register the car. You will not get plates from the out of state dealer but I think you have a 30 day, all state access.

But then when you go to register the car at the DMV, you pay the sales tax in full.

You don't pay the tax where you buy the car, only where you register the car.

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"When two people agree on everything, one of them is not necessary" - Arliss

Yes but the challenge always comes when you are paying for the car and arguing with the dealer that they should remove the tax from the bill.

It sounds like the NY dealer is trying to screw you. You can register and pay the sales tax at AAA or DMV once the car gets to CA. That's how I have done it.

I do not think that a dealer in NY will get you CA plates. I smell a rat.

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I called DMV twice and verified that it is ok to have them collect the sales tax and registration. The dealer from NY will pay CA DMV and they will mail the license plate to me. But now, i am arguinig with the dealer of registration fee because they said CA reg fee is 2% of sales price but i checked with DMV web site and it is only 0.65% + misc charges which is less than 1% in total. (Will increase in 5/19/09).

Bought a car from an Audi dealer in NY recently. They said the same thing and it sounded super fishy initially. But verified it (apparently it's some law for dealers) and gave them the money for IL tax and registration. Got the (IL) plates from them a month later. No problems. Pretty retarded, but that's the way it is apparently.

Mugen.. coming from Honda to BMW eh?

I purchased a car from AZ dealer. I paid them CA sales tax on the vehicle. When vehicle arrived I took to DMV where I showed purchase agreement showing that AZ dealer collected CA sales tax and then just paid vehicle registration fee. You must also get a smog done in CA for registration. Keep in mind that DMV has to do a VIN check of your vehicle as well. They can do it at their office while you wait or you can have an independent vehicle verifier do it for you. In my case I did not want to drive my vehicle to DMV (if you saw my DMV and the people and cars it attracts you would understand) so I had my BMW dealer do it for me and I just took appropriate papers with me. Keep in mind that CA law gives you so many days to register vehicle once it enters CA. Beyond a certain date they can access penalties that can in essence double or triple normal registration fees. My dealer had extreme delays in getting final papers to me so I fell into this double registration period. Keep in mind that the dates you write on the registration forms will determine the fees you pay . Most of the time these dates are hard to verify by DMV but you may be the one out of 100/1000/whatever that might get questioned. FWIW.