Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter_Spaeth
What does it mean to USE the vehicle elsewhere, maybe that's the key to why you don't owe use tax because you already used it. You said purchase AND use. Are you using a card sitting in a vault?
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I know that may sound dumb, but that is what it says. Think of it this way, you live in CA, and have a second/vacation home somewhere in Oregon. And when you stay there with family you end up buying an extra car from an Oregon dealer and just leave it there at the Oregon house should someone staying there need to use it. And then one day you just decide to sell the Oregon house and simply bring the Oregon vehicle back to CA with you. If you had owned that Oregon car for at least 12 months before bringing it back to CA, you would owe no use tax on the car to CA. But lets say you only owned it for 9 months before bringing it back, you would owe CA the full use tax on whatever you originally paid for the vehicle, because you had bought it in Oregon and paid no sales tax on it it to start with. Had you bought and used the vehicle in a state other than Oregon, where you did pay a sales tax on it when you bought it, you would still owe CA use tax on it if you brought it back to CA before owning it at least 12 months. And the CA use tax would still be based on the original purchase price of the vehicle, except now you would reduce the use tax you owe CA dollar for dollar by the amount of sales tax you originally paid to the state you bought the car in.
As for "using" a card you keep in the vault, you could say it is being held and used as potential inventory for an upcoming sale or something like that. The definition can likely be somewhat loose. Like maybe you just parked the car when you first got it, and then never drove it again till you got it back to CA. During that entire time it had still been available for use, right?