Out of State purchase: What to expect?

I can't comment on OH vs. WV, but I can share my experience regarding out-of-state purchase. I live in NH, and called around in MA when I was looking to purchase a Prius. There is no sales tax in NH, and I believe it's 5% in MA. The two dealers in MA I talked to said that they would have to deliver the car to my house for me to avoid paying sales tax; also, there would be "documentation fee" of a little over $100 (the amount was slightly different between the two dealers).

I ended up buying my Prius from a dealer in NH for quicker delivery, but I think the best thing for you to do is to talk to these dealers in WV and see how they normally handle sales to OH residents.

 

I'm a WI resident and bought mine here in NC where I'm going to grad school.

My experience was as follows:

Get THE CALL, my Prius is waiting for me! Woohoo!
I collected and brought with me all necessary Wisconsin paperwork including title application and instructions, figuring they'd want this for documentation since I financed the vehicle price and all fees and taxes.

Confusion anyway. I tell them I am not a NC resident and will be using my WI plates and resgistering the vehicle "back home"

Eventually they figure it out and sale is completed. I owe no NC taxes since I am not registering the car here. I take the car home. The dealer doesn't file out of state forms so I have to write a check for all registration and taxes to Wisconsin and send it in. (a month later the check came for reimbursement since the amount was financed)

I get a call from the dealer, saying the MVO (certificate of motor vehicle origin- required to title a new car) was overlooked since I was registering out of state. They want to know where to send it. Meanwhile, I get a letter from the WI DMV saying they got the money and I can drive with my plates, but they can't send the title without the MVO. Hm.

Still waiting on the title, almost 3 months later.

My tips for you:

Bring in copies of all Ohio registration and title application forms. Use this to document that you are in fact paying sales tax to another state and they shouldn't make you pay WV tax.

Make sure to get the MVO while you're there so your title doesn't take forever to get.

Be firm and let them know that you are not a WV resident. You may have to repeat this statement 5 times or so. But it will eventually sink in....

Hope that helps. I think each state is unique but you will most likely go through something similar to what I did. And hopefully minus the MVO situation. Good luck!

 

Living in Connecticut - we finally had enough of the waiting too. So I called out of our region down to North Carolina and found a GREAT dealer who found me the EXACT car within 4 days.

We pay no sales tax in Connecticut so the dealer didn't collect any. I think you're responsible for the sales taxes based on the state of registry. Upon arriving back home, I promptly registered the car without any state hassles (except for waiting in line for hours.)

A friend of mine who sells BMW's says he registers out-of-state vehicles all the time for his customers. Depending upon the state, a lot of this can be done on-line with the help of people in the state of registry obtaining license plates and FedEx'ing them to the dealer (making life easy for you). But that wasn't an option in our case.

 

I bought my car in VA and live in NC. The dealer will charge you for documentation fees and any local taxes. After a couple of weeks the dealer will send you a proof of milage form, Certificate of Origin, and bill of sale. You use those documents to register your car at the DMV. In NC when you register a new car with the DMV you pay state taxes.

 

I can add my experience and some advice. My son found a car in Helena MT where he goes to school. My wait was projected by my local dealer at that time to be about 6 months the Helena dealer said 6 weeks for my car and color choice. I ordered the car. I next went to the credit union and got my loan set up. When the car arrived at the port I got the VIN number. I was able to finish up the loan. I also went to the licensing place and got my title, registration and license plates. In Washington these are privately run places often in a store of some sort. Other states you have to go to some sort of government office. Find out. Also Montana has no sales tax and Washington does so I had to pay the sales tax when I registered the car. Some states do it differently. Call the dealer in West Virginia they may know particularly if they are near the boarder and get sales from Ohio all the time. The tax thing can be screwy so do your home work. Also if you are getting a loan the loan officer my know, mine did.

 

I'll put my 2 cents in as well.

From what I can remember, we only paid the price of the car to the dealer (through a check cut by the credit union). I got all the neat little things like title, certificate of origin, mileage piece of paper, and my termporary tag (I think it was 7 days).

When I got to Texas, I went to my credit union and they have it set-up where someone from there goes to the DMV twice a day to do registering, so they did that for me (the perks of not owning your car!) So I could either pay the reg. fee and Texas tax by myself or figure it into the loan.

My dealer didnt' have a problem with me being out of state (got it from Illinois on a posting in the Yahoo Group), although my loan officer did not like us sending our check before seeing the car. We also had a doc fee to pay the dealer (was like a $100 or so). That's most of what I remember.

 

I live in NC and bought my Prius in VA back in January. I called the NC DMV and asked how to handle the license, registration and tax when I buy a new car from out of state, and I got a very clueless sounding girl on the phone who said that there was some form that I could fill out, but she didn't know which one it was, or that I should just let the dealer handle it. I ended up letting the dealer handle all of the tax, license and registration work. The dealer charged me about twice what the tax should have been. It then took about 2 1/2 months for my license plates to arrive and with the license plate came a refund check for "tax overcharge."

 

I live in FL and purchased my Prius in March from a dealer in MD. The delaer collected no sales tax and provided temporary tags. When I registered my vehicle in FL, FL collected the tax. I had no problem registering the car or obtaining plates.