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Be the master abater
By Mr. Stupid | March 24, 2008
I feel Stupid for not knowing about excise tax abatements until recently when Kay Kay told me.
At the beginning of the year, my town sends out automobile excise tax bills. This tax applies to all vehicle owners in my state, for the “privilege of road use”. If you’ve driven in Massachusetts lately, you wouldn’t think it such a privilege.
The tax is $25 per $1,000 valuation of your vehicle. So, for example, if you own a car valued at $10,000, you pay $250 at the beginning of the year. What I didn’t realize is that if you buy a new car, you will most likely be able to get some of that back.
Back in 2005, we had a 2003 CR-V, with a valuation of $7,000. We paid $175 in excise taxes in February 2005 for the year. In August, we bought a new car — a Dodge Grand Caravan — because our third (and final) child was about to be born. We paid a prorated amount of excise tax for the new car to cover its “road use” for the remainder of that year.
What I didn’t realize was that we were entitled to get back a prorated amount of the excise tax we paid for the CR-V that year. Kay Kay told me this one night during a poker game.
So two days later, I filled out a form, brought it into town hall with a copy of the sales receipt and a copy of the 2005 excise tax statement. The disaffected staffers at town hall told me it would take six weeks to process my abatement request, but that at the end of that time, I would receive a check for $58.
Disco.
Eight weeks later I called the assessors office, and they told me they were just now getting to the 2005 excise tax abatement applications. Well, if the staff put as much effort into processing the abatements as they did into playing Minesweeper, I would have already received the check. Whatever, it was like found money.
Two weeks later, I received my check.
There’s lots of useful info about excise taxes in general, and abatements in particular, here:
http://www.mass.gov/Ador/docs/dls/publ/misc/mv_bklt.pdf
The abatement forms are available at your town hall (or online), and you have 3 years to file one from the date that you sold your old car. All you need is proof that you sold it, and a copy of the excise tax bill for that year.
This hack applies to residents of Massachusetts. I don’t know if your state even has excise taxes, or if they do, if they allow abatements. YMMV.
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March 24th, 2008 at 8:27 am
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