The good news, new car prices aren’t rising way more than inflation. Used car prices remain a bit of a problem though.
“New car prices are up 29% since March 2020 and used car prices up 34%, both outpacing overall inflation of 23%, he said.”
Hopefully this link provides access w/o a paywall or signing in.
My carvana estimate went up,I checked a few years ago and they keep sending me updates, 10% or so. Couple of grand.
Last I checked KBB, my '13 Mustang was worth almost as much as I paid for it 7 years ago. The wife’s 2014 Audi, as expected has gone down in value… a lot.
Certain models are still hot, some have cooled.
The stupidity of some rules…regarding EV incentives:
To qualify, a buyer’s income can’t exceed $150,000, “and you’re going to spend $54,000 on a new car?” Lindland said.
Gee, I wonder why EV sales might not be as high as expected? Let’s limit the pool of available buyers…
Worked for me, and that’s what I care about most. I almost always get screwed in taxes. Remember the Tax Simplification Act promoted by President Reagan? Everyone’s taxes decreased, except mine.
I understand that Teslas have experienced exceptional depreciation. No wonder since they keep decreasing the price of the cars. Reminds me of the steep GM discounts on new cars that had the same effect. Since I planned to keep the cars for ten or more years the hypothetical depreciation meant little to nothing to me. Same for the Tesla.
The asking prices for the cars I’d want are not increasing very much, if at all. For example, the legendary 1997-2001 Toyota Camry, the 1996-2000 Dodge Caravan, the late 1990’s to early 2000’s Ford Escort, the early 2000’s Ford Focus, etc. I’d probably just buy a fixer-upper the next time around, tow it home, and fix it myself to $ave.
You mean this one?
I honestly don’t recall the effect on my tax liability during that particular administration, but I can tell you that I was stunned to see the massive increase in my income tax liability that resulted from the 2017 “tax reduction” legislation.
Middle class got screwed big-time by the 2017 tax reduction act. The act was advertised as increase in wages because corporations would have more money to pay their workers. All that extra money went stock buybacks and bonuses for executives. Stock buyback’s increased 88% right after 2017 tax reduction.
The 2017 tax cut doubled the individual exemption which benefitted low income renters with no deductions as well as lower-middle class workers with lower priced homes with small mortgage deductions and low property taxes. Also real median household income increased by $5000 in by 2019 so good for the lower income households.
People living in high cost and high tax areas… so the northeast coastal states and the west coast… paid more in taxes because you made more in income than mid-westerners and had your SALT deductions limited to $10K. Not an issue for an engineering manager in Indiana, but is for one in Boston or L.A. That was a tax increase on the “wealthy” or the top 40% of earners.
And despite buybacks and CEO raises, corporate tax revenue increased from 2018 to 2021 to the highest level seen since 2015 even with the lower corporate tax rate.
Additionally, most of those corporations greatly increased their stock dividends. While I like receiving those dividends, I would gladly have accepted somewhat lower dividends if those corporations would have helped the majority of the public by not driving up their retail prices as much as they did over the past 3-4 years.
If anyone doubts me, they should take a look at the record of dividend increases of the major oil companies over the past 3-4 years. They claimed that they were just “passing along the higher cost of crude oil” to their customers, but they were racking-up record profits at the same time, hence the big dividend increases.
Just looking at Exxon Mobil for the last 4 years, the profit margin was a 12% loss in 2020, 8% profit in '21, 13.9 in '22 and 10.7 in '23 for a 4 year average of 8% profit.
Yeah, the sales numbers were huge (the company is huge) and the profit was huge. The profit margin was not excessive in my opinion.
As a non-certified economist, I just paid my property taxes, and I can certify the increase in actual dollars paid since 2021 was 25%. Even though the actual tax rate has not increased that much, total dollars collected and spent has increased due to the estimated market value increase.
Now you have to realize that the reported inflation rate is based on a fictitious shopping cart of products, not actual costs paid by individuals or businesses. Still the last visit to the showroom waiting for my car to be finished was a shocker.
Wow, that’s impressive increase if that was around here where we have no sales tax so everything essentially comes from real estate taxes.
My taxes haven’t changed much as our net town budget hasn’t gone up very much at all. Town just completed market re-valuation assessment and those went up significantly. However, the tax rate then went down accordingly. End result- very minor increase in taxes as compared to last few years which were nearly flat.
My property tax increased ~7% since 2021, but I’m not complaining because of the existence of several relief programs. The ANCHOR program gave me a rebate that came close to negating that 7% increase. I am in the process of completing the Senior Freeze form, which caps my property tax at 2022 levels, and because it is retroactive, that will give me an additional rebate of $1,726.
Then, IF the STAY NJ program actually comes to fruition, it will give me–and all other Senior Citizens-a 50% reduction in their property tax bill. I stated “if” because it wouldn’t take effect until 2026, and the next Governor might decide that he/she isn’t in favor of that program.