The Excise Tax Racket

"Justin Hughes" (justinhughes54) 06/11/2016 at 20:15 • Filed to: death and taxes

2

9

Everybody wants a cut. The feds tax your income. The state charges for your registration and title. And the towns charge excise tax. I don’t mind paying taxes. They pay for our infrastructure, our roads, and our law enforcement and fire departments who help us in a crash. But I do mind paying more than my fair share. Protection from excessively low speed limits and speedtraps intended to generate revenue rather than keep us safe is a big reason many of us use !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . Another way towns get more money out of you than they should is the way they handle collecting excise taxes when you move.

Read on Right Foot Down or continue below

It all started with the !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! I “inherited” from my wife after she bought her !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! . In truth, we were keeping it in the family to be my winter beater, keep !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! out of the snow and salt, and to become our rallycross car. My insurance rates are lower than hers and I was now the primary driver, so she sold it to me for a dollar. Two months later, a good friend of ours had her car totaled, and despite insurance she couldn’t afford to replace it. We didn’t really need the Focus, and we wouldn’t have made any money from selling it anyway, so we gave it to her last November. Then we moved to our house in another town and lived happily ever after.

OK, not exactly. A family emergency led to us spending nearly two weeks in !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! last month. When we got back and I was catching up on mail, I found a nastygram from the town of Acton, MA – an “Officer’s Final Delivery Notice.” It demanded that I pay my overdue excise tax on the Focus immediately, or else I would go into non-renewal status with the Registry of Motor Vehicles. This doesn’t revoke anything, but it prevents me from renewing my license or registrations until I address this issue. By the time we got home, it was already past the due date.

!!! UNKNOWN CONTENT TYPE !!!

The problem is, this was the very first notice I had received from the Town of Acton about the excise tax. Like I said, I don’t mind paying the tax. I only owned it for two months and it was practically worthless, so the amount of tax I owed was a whopping $7.81. I spend more than that on lunch most days. Had I received a bill for it, I would’ve laughed, then paid it immediately. But I never got a bill. Yes, I’d moved out of town, but I’d arranged mail forwarding. I got all of my other mail, but no excise tax bill. I transferred the registration from the Focus to !!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!! at my new address, and they already had the information on my BRZ from past taxes. They could’ve easily run my plates to get my current address. But no – my first notice was also my final one. And because I hadn’t paid the bill they never sent me, my $7.81 tax had ballooned to $52.20, more than six times the original bill. They had six months to send me a bill, but didn’t bother until now. And because I didn’t pay it during the short time window while I was in Canada, tack on an extra $20 to the RMV to get me out of non-renewal status once the tax is paid.

Photo credit: Forbes

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into this issue. It happened to me many years ago, when I moved from Framingham to Marlborough. Once again, a $5 tax turned into a $50 thanks to late fees because I was never billed. And I do mean never – I only found out that I owed excise tax when I tried to renew my registration and wasn’t allowed.

And it’s not just me. It turns out my wife is in exactly the same situation, thanks to her Flex having been registered in Fitchburg for a few months before we moved. She never got billed, so it never got paid, and now we’re both in non-renewal status. Needless to say, this is making registering our new trailer slightly complicated.

I don’t want to be a tax evader. That’s how they took down Capone – imagine what that would do to a generally law abiding citizen like me. But bad laws and bad procedures can make lawbreakers and tax evaders out of anyone. Naturally, we have every intention of paying – I’m not arguing against paying the tax. My problem is the inefficient methods at least three Massachusetts towns are using to multiply small taxes into larger ones.

Is this just laziness? Or do towns do this intentionally to squeeze more money out of us? Has anyone else in Massachusetts (or elsewhere) had this problem?

Follow @justinhughes54 on Twitter

Birddog > Justin Hughes 06/11/2016 at 20:32

3

Come to Illinois. Cook county specifically. When I moved from Davenport, Ia back to Broadview, Il and registered my Truck “Crusty” there was a “Truck Tax”.

An extra $212 on top of standard State rego. For the “privilege” of being in Cook County.

I paid $850 for the truck. To register it in Illinois and Cook County it was in the $450 range.

I don’t mind Taxes. They’re needed.

Chicago and Cook CO can kiss me between the cheeks though.

Mercedes Streeter > Birddog 06/11/2016 at 22:10

1

And let us not even mention the whole state NOT sending out registration renewals this year without any warning at all. A move that has more than paid for itself.

By this month, the state has made more than triple the amount of money it normally would for late registration costs.

They SAID “oh boo hoo, we can’t afford to send out those letters anymore” but let’s be honest, they knew late fees were going to be so profitable for the state. Why spend $450k a month (which was a lie, there’s no way they pay that much for postage) just to make a few million when you can spend nothing and get ten plus million instead?

Birddog > Mercedes Streeter 06/11/2016 at 22:59

1

You are spot on. It’s a cash grab.

The only people to blame for that is Madigan and his old school Democrat buddies. The Dems are the only ones holding Illinois back from a turnaround. And they’ll happily send the state into bankruptcy if they don’t get their way.

shop-teacher > Justin Hughes 06/12/2016 at 00:10

0

I’ve never even heard of an excise tax. That’s insane!

Killing-Machine > Justin Hughes 06/12/2016 at 06:40

0

From Massachusets as well, have you ever tried to file a excise tax abatement?

The longest most ridiculous process I have been a part of. Buy a new car in February, receive my excise tax bill in 1 town, pay excise tax. In August I then move to a new town, 13 days after moving to the new town I receive an excise tax bill for the full year for the same car. I call my accountant, he explains to me that I can file an abatement as I have already paid excise tax on that vehicle for the year. Within 2 weeks I file all the paperwork, I don’t pay the new excise tax bill, while I wait to hear back on the abatement...... Nothing, I figure ok, they agreed that it is paid for the year. Oh no, that is not the case at all, in Novemeber I get a notice that I cannot get a decision on the abatement until I pay the new town the excise tax, they will then decide and send me back the “overpayment”. This is when I start laughing manically. Long story short I stood at the counter at town collectors office until he finally saw me and relented and cancelled the bill

Mercedes Streeter > Birddog 06/12/2016 at 09:42

0

The only Illinois Democrats I care about are Sen. Dick Durbin and the few others fighting for civil rights (we are one of the best states for lbgt rights, like 2nd or 3rs behind California), the rest are going to bring this state to chaos.

Justin Hughes > Killing-Machine 06/12/2016 at 15:22

0

Crazy, huh? I did apply for an abatement once, when I traded in my old car and got taxed for the full year anyway. I don’t necessarily expect them to keep up with that, so no issue there. They also reduced the tax to the period of time I actually owned the car in the town, which was completely fair. I didn’t even have to pay the whole thing in advance.

Killing-Machine > Justin Hughes 06/12/2016 at 17:28

0

You lucked out good, i found it comical how fast they got that bill to me once I moved into town

ateamfan42 > Justin Hughes 06/15/2016 at 09:56

1

Is this just laziness? Or do towns do this intentionally to squeeze more money out of us?

You even need to ask? OF COURSE they are trying to squeeze more money out of us. They can pretend to forget to send notices and it is somehow OUR fault, and we pay the penalties. Governments are great at that.