Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - Printable Version

+- Newell Gurus (https://newellgurus.com)
+-- Forum: General and or Other Stuff (https://newellgurus.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=16)
+--- Forum: General (https://newellgurus.com/forumdisplay.php?fid=21)
+--- Thread: Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing (/showthread.php?tid=4573)

---

Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - bikestuff - 10-27-2018

Gurus,

When I bought my coach, I was advised to register it in Montana and save sales tax along with the tag costs.  It seemed shady to me and I am a bit of a rule follower, so I registered the coach in Alabama.

Today, I ran across a video that is from the Georgia Revenue guy talking about how he went about finding Georgia residents registering their exotic cars in Montana.  

Youtube video about Montana Plates

I have not verified the veracity of the video...but it seemed that this might be of interest to a least a few of the gurus.

Bill

---

RE: Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - encantotom - 10-27-2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvvpS8RGk6Y

this is part of it as well

appears to be real

tom

---

RE: Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - encantotom - 10-27-2018

i listened to both of them. very very interesting.

the ed guy has an interesting exotic car youtube channel that is cool.

tom

---

RE: Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - Nebster - 11-03-2018

That TAVT in GA sounds particularly obnoxious. I can see why in that state, in particular, there would be extra incentive for people to take the LLC route.

We put our last RV in a MT LLC, several years back. Although we had our residence in Colorado at the time, we knew we would not really be using the RV in our home state, since we bought it to travel other places. We lived full time on the road and spent less than a few weeks a year in Colorado -- those, mostly just for packing and unpacking the thing.

We reasoned that we could defend our choice of the LLC if necessary in court, should it come to that (we certainly would not be going to jail for evasion, that I can say for sure). But it was also quite clear that there was almost no chance Colorado would "find us" and even create that hassle in the first place. Contrary to what the revenue officer guy states in that video, a properly-registered MT LLC will not have the names of the Georgians on any of the filed paperwork.

The regulations and laws are different in every state, and so the costs and incentive varies, too. In the last year, MT has increased its state fees for high value vehicles held in LLCs, reducing to some extent the benefit of this "loophole." I also found last year that it was suddenly harder to get the level of insurance coverage we wanted while holding our Newell in the same MT LLC, so we moved it into our names and dissolved the LLC.

I think for most full-timers it still makes sense to run the MT LLC numbers when looking at purchasing most any modern Newell, if one's home state imposes a meaningful tax burden at the time of a sale. On the other hand, if you're going to park 50 sports cars in a hangar across town, maybe this is not a great plan.

---

RE: Georgia is onto the Montana Plate thing - Richard - 11-03-2018

FWIW, we held our Newells in a Montana LLC for 10 years. When we moved to Florida, Florida laws make it really easy and economical to plate the coach in Florida, and transfer owenership to me. It was actually cheaper than maintaining the LLC. Plus Florida is also know to be an agressive state for pursuing LLCs.

That said, in ten years, I never once had an issue. But Nebster is correct, Montana has changed it's fee schedule, so you have to run the numbers as he said to look at the benefit/ risk ratio.

---