[quote=bsrsharma]Is there anything in the rules that prevents me from requesting a friend or relative to buy a new car with CARS program and then selling it to me? This seems like a win for everyone. Old car scrapped, new car bought. I and my friend can then split the difference and the friend can go ahead and buy a better used (or new) vehicle if needed. Specially useful if he wants a lower MPG vehicle that won’t work with CARS but I want a high MPG vehicle.[/quote]
1) i don’t think there isn’t a problem if a friend buying a car under CARS and then reselling it to you. However, you’ll end up paying for taxes twice. Your friend/relative will pay for sales tax and registration taxes for the new car Then when he/she transfers the thing to you, you end up paying registration taxes again AND use tax for the estimated value of the used car…And no, it won’t work if your friend/relative sells you the car for $1…DMV will flag this, trust me…
That pretty much eliminates the benefit of getting a CARS subsidy.
2) A better approach, I think, would be for you and your friend/relative to both buy the car together, with both of your names on the title of the car. Only one of you have to provide a clunker for trade in to take full advantage of the government subsidy…So for a brief period of time, the title will belong to both you and your friend/relative. Afterwards, just have your friend/relative removed from the title. Call up the DMV for the details on how to do this though. I don’t have the details. The assumption would be though that this would be an all cash purchase, since getting a loan for this would pose an interesting problem. Also, you better trust your friend/relative…or at least make him/her pay for half of the car up front, and pay him/her off after he/she is removed from the title. Slightly more concern is the liability associated with you driving the car with both of you on the title..You get into an accident, both of you can possibly be sued. Also getting insurance will be interesting when two people are on the title.
Disclaimer: do your own due diligence… I have not crossed that road yet 🙂
Milk the system baby, milk it. ( I would if I could. But in lieu of that, I’m more than happy to help other fellow piggington’s think of different ways to doing it…better us than overleveraged j6p that I have to now subsidize with higher taxes : ) )
