Need info on buying a car in California for export.

[010752]

I've sold a couple cars to Europe and the mideast, but selling was where it stopped. I live 5 miles from one port amd 30 miles from another, so I delivered one car to where the buyer was staying here and took my plate and the others the exporter just had a flatbed pickup. Sales tax for Florida wasn't involved because the buyer pays it upon title change which likely wasn't going to happen in Florida anyway. One buyer did tell me that his home country was going to charge 100% tax on the selling price for importing. He wanted me to lower the bill of sale, but I ended up not giving one and told him he's on his own with his country and I wasn't going to falsify anything.

A lot of dealers export here, don't know if California sales tax is exempt for exports or not. Might have to check with Calif revenue or a Calif dealer. They probably deliver to the exporter at the port with the proper docs just like here. Might have to avoid dealers if Calif tax is to be paid.

Contact the US Customs, they have to release the car and paperwork and should be able to tell you what to do. It's in their hands when it gets to the port anyway.

[Twin_Turbo]

For a FL car you'll need a power of attorney most likely

[BangkokDean]

Originally Posted by BBShark

Dean, Isn't it illegal to import American cars into Thailand?

I did not say a car...........but with loads of money anything can be done here.

Lets say the car costs you $5,000 in the US the Thai customs mafia then asses the car for 10 times the $5,000 or $50,000 then the taxis 300% on the 50,000= $150,000 duty on a $5,000 car. The funny part is before you ship it you check the import tax code or you actually ask the officer how much and what is needed to import the car. Now the printed regulations is close to what the officer told you, great. Now you ship it in and guess what the law that day/ hour/minute is different so you either pay up or they confiscate the car and sell it for auction, that the officer that confiscated it gets 40% of the auction price.

[68/70Vette]

Just talked to my neighbor. He's exported cars.

He said all you need is a bill of lading and the title to the car signed by the owner. That's all. No taxes. That gets you out of the country. But you can't drive the car. (I think the interpretation of the "can't drive the car," is that you don't want to get caught. Or in other words when you show up at the port with car, it should at that point in time be on a flat bed truck.)

If you want to drive the car in the US, then you have to go through the complete sales tax, title transfer, registration, etc.

..........................
Just having a signed title doesn't seem to offer a lot of safeguards against shipping a stolen car out of the country. Customs does do a VIN check now to make sure the car's VIN number is not a list of stolen cars.