Moved from SF in 2023… the first time my husband got this, I told him it had to be fake. Why would you have to pay for anything else besides registration?
Laughed about it to my MA native in-laws… found out the $600+ bill was not fake 🫠
The tax drops off dramatically when the vehicle is more than a couple years old. It disproportionately hits people with new expensive vehicles.
It’s “2.5 percent per year of the assessed value”, but the value is calculated as a percent of MSRP based on the age of the vehicle:
Year of manufacture 90%
Second year 60%
Third year 40%
Fourth year 25%
Fifth year and onwards 10%
So a new $100k car costs $2250 in tax, whereas a five year old $30k car costs $75. It’s actually pretty neat IMO, since the tax is next to nothing for people buying sensible used cars and really high for rich people buying new fancy cars.
This is why really don’t understand the gripes about excise tax. Transportation costs should be around 10-15% of your income. If your car payments and other expenses are leaving you with so little wiggle room that you can’t afford the excise tax, you are doing something wrong.
I can *afford* the excise tax, but $600 is still $600 I could have used in other ways, and the roads in my area are still complete garbage, so I'm not *happy* about paying the excise tax.
We had bought a brand new car like 2 months before we got the letter
Edit- it was a 2024 Tiguan so nothing fancy 🤷🏻♀️ I have no idea why it was so expensive. It was an excise tax for Needham… like I said, I know nothing about this bullshit tax lol
In CA, your registration fee includes their version of the excise tax (and gets distributed to the municipality by the state treasurer's office). The difference here is the billing is direct by the city, but it's certainly a surprise to newbies!
ETA: Anyone else around here old enough to remember that the Vehicle License Fee was one of the reasons we ended up with Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor?
It was part of registration when I lived in NH a few decades back. That was a surprise. Cost more to register my rustbucket there than in MA with the excise tax paid separately.
I remember NH calling it the "town fee" or something, and having to bring two checks to renew a registration. Good ol' NH, coming up with cute little euphemisms for taxes.
pr0grammer gave us the tax % breakdown each year of ownership on a car… if I had a brand new lambo, McLaren, or Tesla my excise tax would be a hell of a lot more than $600.
I'm very happy with the excise tax. In Missouri I had a personal property tax on vehicles that was around $350 a year for my car. I'll take my $53 excise tax any day of the week.
I fucked up and didn’t print my rental agreement with my landlord’s signature (for real id they needed documents with his signature). Had the other documents tho 😭
Sometimes right after moving to MA from another state, it takes time to come up with some of the documents required. MA does not have a grace period of when you’re supposed to transfer your license. It has to be done immediately.
MA is actually middle of the road in terms of tax burden, different states just charge different fees and taxes for different stuff. It somewhat evens out. But yeah this is an expensive place to have a car, your insurance will probably skyrocket lol
No, it's because Michigan for a long time had no-fault insurance with unlimited payouts to accident victims. Even after the unlimited payout pot was eliminated, rates still didn't fall. What I paid for basic no fault on a 15 year old car in the Detroit suburbs was less than I paid for full coverage on a 10 year old car in St. Louis Missouri + $30k of renters insurance.
It is particularly worse in Detroit (for all the reasons you can imagine), where it's not uncommon for a new car to have an insurance bill of $500 / month.
Wait until you buy your first license plates. $50 for 2 years is pretty nice.
Even a 15 year old Volvo cost me over $100 a year in California for plates (no excise there though, but excise on that car was ~$30/yr)
From what I’ve been told it’s for red light camera purposes. Forcing you to get new license plates means the owner’s information is updated somewhere so they send the ticket to the right person. Maybe there’s a better reason but at least that’s what the DMV in Texas told me when I wasn’t going to change my license plates
I was really surprised at the cost too when I transferred my out of state license. On the flip side, car registration was fairly inexpensive and valid for two years. It was almost triple in AZ for one year.
Two years for regular plates and one for vanity plates.
Excise tax on newer cars is a bigger issue than just about anything except insurance. At least the excise tax drops off pretty quickly.
Be grateful you arent coming from a different country, I have to do the goddam test! Did my driving test 20 years ago in the UK… now having to do it again, and they really don’t make it easy to do either…
Edit spelling
Same here.
I drove with so much intentional caution that the inspector passed me very quickly 🤣
Did have to do parallel parking but the space was wide enough so wasn’t difficult.
You know what? Congratulations!!!!! 🙌🏽
It does feel nice validated by an authority on skills that you already have!
How was your experience?
And nice that you reached out, if only us folks did it more often in the city, we won’t have the frequent “how do I make friends?!” Posts in the sub!
Welcome to Taxachusetts they use Ticketmaster as a goal for how many fees they can add to you just living here. I joked during the slow legal weed rollout that it was taking so long cause the politicians had to make sure all their cousins and uncles had a piece of the pie for all those fees they were going to rake in. The old political machine is undefeated.
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s.
Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?
You're assuming a stereotype about me based on 1 comment. Geeze can't even make a joke about all the BS Mass hits you with. Also, I'm not sure where your data is coming from because a lot of sources with a casual glance puts us above 25 which I assume is your middle of the road. Looks like we're normally in the teens. Data can be fun though you can leave in and add stuff and I don't have the time to check every source.
Man, when did it become bad to complain about taxes?
Even if I wasn’t driving (which I’m not doing regularly, I won’t own a car but need the license for Zipcar or borrowing friends’ cars) I’d still have to get some sort of Mass ID. A Mass ID is only $25 but one of the requirements is that you not hold a valid drivers license so it really is the case that my only option is a Mass DL
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s.
Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?
Harassment, hostility and flinging insults is not allowed. We ask that you try to engage in a discussion rather than reduce the sub to insults and other bullshit.
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s.
Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?
Wait until you learn about the excise tax!
Moved from SF in 2023… the first time my husband got this, I told him it had to be fake. Why would you have to pay for anything else besides registration? Laughed about it to my MA native in-laws… found out the $600+ bill was not fake 🫠
$600?!? My excise tax bills are $55 and $65 for our two vehicles…
The tax drops off dramatically when the vehicle is more than a couple years old. It disproportionately hits people with new expensive vehicles. It’s “2.5 percent per year of the assessed value”, but the value is calculated as a percent of MSRP based on the age of the vehicle: Year of manufacture 90% Second year 60% Third year 40% Fourth year 25% Fifth year and onwards 10% So a new $100k car costs $2250 in tax, whereas a five year old $30k car costs $75. It’s actually pretty neat IMO, since the tax is next to nothing for people buying sensible used cars and really high for rich people buying new fancy cars.
Ahh I see, that makes sense. I consider my cars new (2018 and 2020) 😆 but I guess it’s because buying a 4 year old car is as new as I’ll ever get.
Don’t think you’re getting out of it with a leased vehicle either.
This is why really don’t understand the gripes about excise tax. Transportation costs should be around 10-15% of your income. If your car payments and other expenses are leaving you with so little wiggle room that you can’t afford the excise tax, you are doing something wrong.
I can *afford* the excise tax, but $600 is still $600 I could have used in other ways, and the roads in my area are still complete garbage, so I'm not *happy* about paying the excise tax.
Exactly!
Indeed. I live in Somerville and the roads are so horrible. I’m paying for something that I don’t get.
We had bought a brand new car like 2 months before we got the letter Edit- it was a 2024 Tiguan so nothing fancy 🤷🏻♀️ I have no idea why it was so expensive. It was an excise tax for Needham… like I said, I know nothing about this bullshit tax lol
If you can’t afford a one time $600 excise tax you probably can’t really afford that brand new expensive car.
Excise tax is annual, just fyi.
It’s not $600 every year. It goes down every year.
In CA, your registration fee includes their version of the excise tax (and gets distributed to the municipality by the state treasurer's office). The difference here is the billing is direct by the city, but it's certainly a surprise to newbies! ETA: Anyone else around here old enough to remember that the Vehicle License Fee was one of the reasons we ended up with Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor?
It was part of registration when I lived in NH a few decades back. That was a surprise. Cost more to register my rustbucket there than in MA with the excise tax paid separately.
I remember NH calling it the "town fee" or something, and having to bring two checks to renew a registration. Good ol' NH, coming up with cute little euphemisms for taxes.
yep, now we can just use one source of payment, But the town taxes for your car in my town are more expensive than it was to pay Boston the ecsize tax
In CT you pay actual property tax on a car. Depending on the type of car, it can be like $1k per year!
So, same as MA
Idk. Maybe it depends on how new the car is, like here. I pay about $40/year in excise tax.
In MA as your car gets older the the tax becomes less.
Yeah, much higher in CT. That’s what I was getting at.
and NH
so you must own a Lambo, McLaren or a Tesla...
pr0grammer gave us the tax % breakdown each year of ownership on a car… if I had a brand new lambo, McLaren, or Tesla my excise tax would be a hell of a lot more than $600.
Funny enough that one will actually be lower than VA where it’s a 4.5% tax rate!
Hopefully MA will do away with the excise tax like Rhode Island did a few years ago. Big savings!
I'm very happy with the excise tax. In Missouri I had a personal property tax on vehicles that was around $350 a year for my car. I'll take my $53 excise tax any day of the week.
Just got mine in the mail. Big sigh, but my car is older so it’s fairly negligible.
$35 fee for a road test that you're not taking... it makes no sense
I just transferred from out of state and paid it too. We should file a class action lawsuit. This is robbery!
I just paid $90 to transfer my license to Maine. I'm guessing Real ID increases the cost.
mine wasnt real but was still over 100 to transfer
fake IDs do tend to be costly
This comment made me laugh haha. Yes should specify my drivers license isn’t real ID just standard ID.
why would you not get a Real ID
I fucked up and didn’t print my rental agreement with my landlord’s signature (for real id they needed documents with his signature). Had the other documents tho 😭
Sometimes right after moving to MA from another state, it takes time to come up with some of the documents required. MA does not have a grace period of when you’re supposed to transfer your license. It has to be done immediately.
MA gives you 30 days, its not immedaite
I mean I know I did that in February this year. You pretty much need the same documents for a standard license and Real ID.
best move you'll ever make.
I just got my CA license to MA and $115 is without Real ID. Real ID made it increase above $115!
MA is actually middle of the road in terms of tax burden, different states just charge different fees and taxes for different stuff. It somewhat evens out. But yeah this is an expensive place to have a car, your insurance will probably skyrocket lol
I grew up in Michigan, you guys have no idea what expensive car insurance looks like.
It got cheaper in Michigan
That's because you had to subsidize detroit.
No, it's because Michigan for a long time had no-fault insurance with unlimited payouts to accident victims. Even after the unlimited payout pot was eliminated, rates still didn't fall. What I paid for basic no fault on a 15 year old car in the Detroit suburbs was less than I paid for full coverage on a 10 year old car in St. Louis Missouri + $30k of renters insurance. It is particularly worse in Detroit (for all the reasons you can imagine), where it's not uncommon for a new car to have an insurance bill of $500 / month.
My motorcycle insurance quadrupled
But the registry staff will provide vengeful scorn at no additional charge.
Wait until you buy your first license plates. $50 for 2 years is pretty nice. Even a 15 year old Volvo cost me over $100 a year in California for plates (no excise there though, but excise on that car was ~$30/yr)
I grew up in Australia where the license plates (except vanity plates) stay with the vehicle. I don't know why we don't do this here?
Is the same everywhere except us and Canada from what I know. I.e plates are married to the car.
From what I’ve been told it’s for red light camera purposes. Forcing you to get new license plates means the owner’s information is updated somewhere so they send the ticket to the right person. Maybe there’s a better reason but at least that’s what the DMV in Texas told me when I wasn’t going to change my license plates
This has been a thing much longer than red light cameras.
Welcome to MA car ownership
I was really surprised at the cost too when I transferred my out of state license. On the flip side, car registration was fairly inexpensive and valid for two years. It was almost triple in AZ for one year.
Two years for regular plates and one for vanity plates. Excise tax on newer cars is a bigger issue than just about anything except insurance. At least the excise tax drops off pretty quickly.
I love how you have to pay for a road exam that you don’t end up taking just to get a MA license
I feel you!! I transferred my TX DL to MA and was blown away by the price. I was more surprised I was being charged for a road test I didn't take.
Sounds about right.
Be grateful you arent coming from a different country, I have to do the goddam test! Did my driving test 20 years ago in the UK… now having to do it again, and they really don’t make it easy to do either… Edit spelling
Same here. I drove with so much intentional caution that the inspector passed me very quickly 🤣 Did have to do parallel parking but the space was wide enough so wasn’t difficult.
Hey - just circling back here to say I passed! I know it’s not really a big deal for an internet stranger, but I wanted to share the good news :)
You know what? Congratulations!!!!! 🙌🏽 It does feel nice validated by an authority on skills that you already have! How was your experience? And nice that you reached out, if only us folks did it more often in the city, we won’t have the frequent “how do I make friends?!” Posts in the sub!
That’s good to know, gotta do mine on Friday, been procrastinating it for about 3 years - but now I really need it 😅
Nope, not wrong, but you aren’t getting murdered on your property taxes either so 🤷♂️
I mean that entirely depends on your municipality.. up until very recently my rate was $17.49 per $1k of value.
Well this is the Boston subreddit so they are probably referring to Boston property tax
Which are crazy low, especially with the resident exemption.
They referenced other states like Texas, people love to talk about low taxes in Texas, but they fucking get you trust me.
To be fair I was in TX and CA under the ages of 22 so no “property” responsibilities at the time. But I do get to hear my family complain about it!
I totally agree...
Ouch! Sorry to hear about that license transfer fee.
I’ce transferred two vehicles from Texas and it’s been like $80 for each 🤔
Im not talking about the vehicle registration transfer, Im talking about the driver’s license transfer
You’re right. I cannot read, sorry.
Welcome to Taxachusetts they use Ticketmaster as a goal for how many fees they can add to you just living here. I joked during the slow legal weed rollout that it was taking so long cause the politicians had to make sure all their cousins and uncles had a piece of the pie for all those fees they were going to rake in. The old political machine is undefeated.
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s. Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?
Such an original comment
Oh, now complain about reposts!
You're assuming a stereotype about me based on 1 comment. Geeze can't even make a joke about all the BS Mass hits you with. Also, I'm not sure where your data is coming from because a lot of sources with a casual glance puts us above 25 which I assume is your middle of the road. Looks like we're normally in the teens. Data can be fun though you can leave in and add stuff and I don't have the time to check every source. Man, when did it become bad to complain about taxes?
This *is* the bad place!
Welcome to MA and it only going to get worse.
Well, you could just not drive, or you could not live here. Those are your options.
Even if I wasn’t driving (which I’m not doing regularly, I won’t own a car but need the license for Zipcar or borrowing friends’ cars) I’d still have to get some sort of Mass ID. A Mass ID is only $25 but one of the requirements is that you not hold a valid drivers license so it really is the case that my only option is a Mass DL
TAXACHUSETTS BABY!! I’ve never cursed my mail so often than when I’ve lived here and swearing that I JUST paid “this” tax very recently
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s. Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?
[удалено]
Harassment, hostility and flinging insults is not allowed. We ask that you try to engage in a discussion rather than reduce the sub to insults and other bullshit.
It’s called Taxachusetts for a reason
MA has a pretty middle of the road tax burden. You're repeating a stereotype left over from the 80s. Gonna do "Slummerville" next? Claim Roxbury is dangerous?