Donate the Ford to charity and get a tax benefit.
Over 90% of people in this country cannot itemize because the standard deduction is so high. If you can’t itemize, there is no deduction. Then, you oly get a deduction that is equal to what the charity sells it for unless the charity keeps it for its own use which is very rare.
Suppose the charity sells it for 500. Then if you can itemize and are in the 12% bracket, your 500 deduction nets you a lower tax bill or bigger refumd of $500 x .12 or $60. Much less than if you junked it and much, much less that you could sell a good running 2010 Fusion for.
Most charities do not want to be in the used car business and have arrangements to sell their donated cars for a fixed price and I believe my $500 example is too high.
My guess is that you can call the charity and find out exactly what your tax deduction is.
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Exactly. I tried to make that point a week ago or so. Not to mention, like home office expense, it is a red flag for the IRS to question you on. I just got done with them concerning 2018 (which turned out to my favor) and I don’t ever want to talk to them again.
The IRS tried to disallow my meal deduction one year because I had 300 days of meal allowance so thy said I was an itinerant trucker without a Tax home. I gust showed them my logbook, the IRS publication that shows truckers how to calculate meal allowance by 1/4 days by when you leave home have 8 hours off duty,and return home and my place on a buffalo terminal seniority list.
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There are a whole lot of folk out there that would appreciate a GOOD running car for a few hundred bucks, sell the Fusion to some one who really needs some cheap transportation and feel good about owning a new Mazda mmmmm. Ok Wankels are gone I guess…
I’d like to offer an update: The used car dealership I bought the Mazda 6 tells me that they can help alter/transfer documents and help me transfer ownership to a new potential buyer. For this service they will charge me a document fee of 250 dollars which is par for the course and acceptable should I decide finally to sell the Mazda6 (and stick with the old reliable Ford Fusion.)
Since I haven’t registered the car in my state (NY) yet, I am kind of the silent second owner. Official documents will not show that I was ever an owner of this car. The Mazda6 will continue to be a 1-owner car until it gets to the new buyer (should I absolutely decide to go this route.)
To conclude, should I decide to sell this car I would need to find a buyer and then explain to her about the situation and to go with her to the dealership to handle this transfer of ownership and she will also need to register the car in her state.
Sounds real nice but I think you are on thin ice. What about insurance documents? Clearly you reported this to your insurance company? When I buy a car I need to call them the next day with the VIN and other information so that I’m covered. I just think decide one way or the other.
When I was a kid, our neighbor was so afraid to commit to buying a new house that he required the realtor to take it back within a year if he wanted. Got cold feet and turned it back for the same price as he paid and lost money because the value had gone up. Then bought another house a few blocks away. How does that 60’s song go? “Sometimes you gotta make up your mind, say yes to one and leave the other behind, it’s not always easy and not always kind, but sometimes you gotta make up your mind.”
Yes, I got insurance on the car so I definitely had the VIN reported and the car does have 30 day New Jersey temporary registration to myself. I didn’t think about this at all, do you think this would present some kind of issue?
Car insurance has nothing to do with vehicle ownership. The main issue is with the dealer/state collecting sales tax, if the tax was paid at the time of sale there should be no crime in selling the vehicle.
Been 15 days? Is car gone? Sold? Donated?
Do you really think someone is going to all this trouble to buy your vehicle ? You will not have it in your name ( which is a typical Craigslist Curbstone Scam ) so they are going to assume that you have found a major problem after you bought the car. Either put it in your name or see if the dealer will take it back for the same 250.00 fee . Stop messing around .
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I still have the car.
That’s a good point and I definitely wonder if a potential buyer will be suspicious that I am flipping the car almost immediately. They’ll wonder if there’s a problem with it that I am not disclosing, which is reasonable. The answer is that there isn’t but it’s reasonable to have some concern. One way to work with this is to lower the price.
You make an excellent point.
Why, exactly, do you like the Fusion better?
The Ford has better visibility, better low-end torque for city driving, it has also been modified with an expensive lowered suspension via a Bilstein coilover kit. It has lightweight alloy wheels and slightly wider and stickier tires than factory. Everything about it feels more ‘natural’ if that makes sense. I also like the message it sends out: I drive a grandpa’s car that’s faster than you and outhandles you.
Which makes one wonder ‘why buy the Mazda6 in the first place?’ Go figure. I made a mistake.
And who do you think gets that message ? Or better yet how many of them care.
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My dad’s work involved making positive first impressions and maintaining that positive reputation with his diverse customer base; the purchasing department, engineers, project managers, warehouse managers, and accounting departments.
Dad drove aging “geezer” cars most of those years. By commonly held standards that should have been making a negative impression on many of those customers.
Many, many of those folks took time to attend my dad’s funeral visitation. What did they all tell me – company owners, corporate presidents, department managers, secretaries and receptionists, and janitors? They spoke of Dad’s character, his courtesy toward everyone, his unfailing honesty, that he treated everyone from highest to lowest in authority with the same respect. AND they all told me how impressed they were with how impeccibly CLEAN inside and out that Dad maintained his car and that it was further proof of his good character.
No one cared what car he drove. What they noticed, what they respected, what they remembered was Dad’s character and something as simple and basic as maintaining a clean car was visible testimony to his attention to detail, self respect, and respect for those who might ride in his car with him.
It’s fine to have fun with modifications and snazzy options on a vehicle. Enjoy it. But never make the mistake of wanting that to define the impression you make with other people.
I’ll climb off my memory of Dad soapbox now and return this discussion to original programming.
Good luck with satisfactorily sorting out your situation and happy motoring.
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The whole thing kind of smells a bit to me in regard to what the dealer says they will do. NJ shows 10 days to title a car in the buyer’s name and it’s way over that. You say the dealer will “alter” the paperwork.
What this is essentially doing is shorting the state their cut and I doubt that will be agreeable to them.
Dare I say that you should call the tag office and pose this scenario to them…
As a potential buyer I would be hesitant to buy into the “made a mistake” story and assume the car has a serious issue which was recently found after purchase.
And there is also the question of…what if this buyer you seek does not show up for 6 months, a year, or never?
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That’s not the message it sends to me, but whatever.
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Buyer’s remorse is one thing. Looking to fiddle the legal paperwork and taxes is a fast road to real trouble.
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Yeah I guess that’s what I was trying to say. NY is so broke now that they will be looking at every penny of revenue and if they ever find out they were cheated out of their sales tax, that would be tax fraud. So you would argue you have a car on load but then you put insurance on it. So which is it, a car on loan from NJ or a purchase? If a purchase you owe NY tax.