Lowell (MA) Sales Tax

Sales taxes are regulated by state and federal laws. Since states control the amount of sales tax that they charge locally, some others have decided to omit sales taxes at all to facilitate transactions. There are municipalities, or cities that can impose their taxes. As of right now, there are 5 states in the USA that do not charge a state sales tax. These states are Alaska, Montana, Oregon, Delaware, New Hampshire.

When you purchase a car, the laws regarding the applicable sales tax are a bit more complicated. The first factor to consider is that there is a base 6% sales tax. Let’s say that your car costs 10k. You pay 6% on that, which is $600 on sales tax. On top of this cost, you also pay fees for vehicle registration and licenses. If you complete the transaction via a dealership, then all this paperwork and its cost are factored in on the sales agreement. If you buy the car via a private seller, then it is you, the buyer that needs to process all this paperwork via the local tax office and vehicle registration office. You would be responsible for paying registration fees and the title.

States allow for trade-in allowances, and this is a fantastic way to reduce your tax bill. Instead of selling your old vehicle, and then incurring sales taxes on that transaction, you can bring your old vehicle to the dealership and do a trade-in allowance for a new car. The value of the trade-in is reduced from the sticker price of the car that your intent to purchase. Then some dealerships offer rebates, which further reduces your total sales tax.

Let’s say that you will purchase the same car as in the above example that costs 10k. Instead, this time you have an old car to do a trade-in that is valued at 2k. The dealership offers you a 1k rebate offer. In that case, your sales tax will not be charged anymore on the original price of 10k, but it will be charged on the reduced price after the rebate and the trade-in. More specifically, we will reduce from 10k, the value of the rebate (1k) and the value of the trade-in (2k), hence a total of 3k of discount. We would end up paying out-of-pocket 7k. The applicable sales tax on a 7k car is $7000*6%= $420. We can see that we are paying a lower sales tax compared to the previous tax of $600. We are not paying any taxes on the old car that you brought for a rebate and not paying any sales taxes on that.

Some areas have very small sales taxes. Starting, we have Alaska, which has a sales tax of 1.76%. We need to be mindful that products and services are very expensive in Alaska. Moving on with the list, we have Oregon, Delaware, Montana, and New Hampshire that have a 0% sales tax rate. If you need information regarding the ranking of states based on sales taxes, you can check this page.

A sales tax certificate is a document that allows a business to make sales-tax-free purchases of goods and services that it intends to reuse for business and to later sell and collect sales tax on. Some states allow buyers and businesses that engage in frequent transactions to create a blanket certificate. This is a simplified version of the sale certificate, and it is valid for a specified amount of time.

Sellers that do not have a large volume of transactions do not even need a sale certificate. Such is the case of garage sales. Some states offer direct payment certificates, which allow for the purchasers to not pay any sales tax to their sellers, but they pay everything to the government directly. There are numerous intricate scenarios and for this, you need a good CPA or a sales law specialist to better guide you.

45 states (do not levy these taxes in the states Alaska, Oregon, Delaware, Montana and New Hampshire) and the District of Columbia impose general sales taxes that apply to the sale or lease of most goods and some services, and states also may levy selective sales taxes on the sale or lease of particular goods or services. States may grant local governments the authority to impose additional general or selective sales taxes.