Roadtreking Blog

I would like nothing more than to not have to pay sales tax and high registration fees. However, I do drive and live in the state I register my Motor Home in, and my civic pride takes over. Everyone complains about the condition of the roads. Maybe it's because the state doesn't receive enough tax dollars. When Montana and South Dakota start issuing a Jury Duty summons to the ones that elect to do this with an LLC it will change.

We sold our house and went full time in June. We spend most of our time on the lot we bought in the Hilton Head Island Motorcoach Resort in South Carolina. We were going to register the coach here until we found out they wanted $3000.00 to register.....EVERY YEAR!!! We looked into all of the states where registration is cheaper and settled on South Dakota because of cheap registration, no state income tax and not having to lie and say it was my permanent residence, we just had to fill out an affidavit that says we're "nomads". They don't call nomads for jury duty either. And about the condition of roads, I just drove from one side of South Dakota to the other and the roads were in great condition. I pay a lot of taxes, if the morons in government can't get their act together and reign in their ridiculous spending habits, it's not just roads you'll be complaining about. It's hard for me to have "civic pride" the way these idiots spend our money.

Like robbieb, We just changed our residency to SD from AZ. AZ wanted $5000 per year for Reg and Plates. In SD it is $500. NO BRAINER. We bought out New Coach a year ago and had to pay AZ $21k in taxes (I was still working at the time) so I could not claim it in another state with lower sales taxes.

Les

Prior to buying our used 2011 Itasca Sunova 33C motorhome from a New Jersey RV dealer, we explored the possibility of establishing a Montana LLC. The dealer told us that the NJ state sales tax division audited such evasion tactics and prosecuted them. We, therefore, paid the full 7% NJ sales tax on the vehicle which was thousands of dollars despite the fact that New York sales tax had already been paid when the vehicle was sold new in Syracuse. New Jersey allows a vehicle trade-in to be deducted from the sales tax charged, but every time the same vehicle is sold without a trade-in, New Jersey wants another 7% tax on the total sale price. If a new vehicle is resold and registered in New Jersey three times before it is scrapped the final value of the vehicle will have been taxed 28% (4 X 7%), which I feel is grossly unfair. At some point, states should stop charging sales tax on vehicles that have already been taxed. Fortunately New Jersey's vehicle registration and license plate fees are not thousands of dollars as "lesmorrow" encountered in AZ.