Moving and want to buy a car...but don't want to pay state fees twice.

July 1, 2015 3:45 PM

I currently live in DC and am moving to NC on August 13th. I am planning to purchase a new car at some point in the next two months. Ideally, it would be before the move because that means a safer and roomier ride down. But I can't figure out if we might have to pay a bunch of fees twice - and can't get a straight answer from dealers. [mi]

I plan to purchase a Subaru Forester at a dealer and trade in my current Honda Civic. The Civic is on its last legs - and I really like the Forester for its safety record, space, and ride.

I am planning to move to Chapel Hill, NC on August 13th and plan to get a driver's license down there. I have a DC license and own a property in NC.

I've been talking with dealers in MD and VA but am not sure if I can purchase a car at a dealer in one of those states and have it registered in NC, where I own property but do not have a driver's license yet.

I would rather not pay title, tax, fees twice - but want to make sure my car is safe. If it's a matter of several thousand dollars, I'm likely to wait. A few hundred, less so.

Does anyone know how this process works?

Thank you,
Mel

posted by melodykramer to Travel & Transportation (5 answers total)

I bought a car in MD and just told the dealer that I would handle registering the car myself. They gave me temporary plates - 60 days I believe, and I think it's less in VA - for free, and that was that. When you get to NC you can go to the DMV with your paperwork, pay one set of fees (including sales tax) and get the new title and registration then. Do check ahead of time to see what NC requires. In my case I needed to get a certain type of inspection, which I was able to do when I was still in the DC area but it took some time. You don't want to show up with one day left on your temp papers and find out there's a weeks worth of driving around to inspection sites and going through the drivers license process that you still need to do.
posted by exutima at 3:53 PM on July 1, 2015

Anecdata:

In late 2001, I purchased a car in Oregon, which has no sales tax. In early 2002, I moved to Idaho, which does.

When I did, Idaho asked me how much time had elapsed between buying the car and moving to Idaho. Had the answer been less than 90 days (it wasn't), I would have had to pay Idaho sales tax on the original purchase price of the vehicle.

I didn't register it until a few months after I moved to Idaho, but the tax question was based on the day I moved. I still wound up having it double-registered in Oregon and Idaho for a few months, though.
posted by Hatashran at 3:55 PM on July 1, 2015

In NC, if you have bought the car within 90 days and have a receipt for the tax paid to the previous state, they will not charge sales tax when you register the vehicle. The DMV web site for North Carolina explains this in pretty good detail.
posted by tybstar at 4:37 PM on July 1, 2015

Just to clarify, you pay sales tax when you title and register the vehicle, not when you purchase it (unless you do that at the same time). Dealers, at least in MD, will sell you the vehicle without titling/registering it, meaning without collecting the sales tax, and just give you a temporary registration. If you wait until moving to NC to title the car, you run no risk of paying sales tax twice.
posted by exutima at 5:23 PM on July 1, 2015

Exutima is correct -- which is actually why I elected to pay the registration fees twice when I was in your situation, as the tax savings was greater overall. In your case though, NC is almost certainly going to be cheaper than DC taxes, so you likely want to buy close to the move date and do temporary tags.
posted by veery at 11:41 AM on July 2, 2015