Selling a vehicle in Missouri - I hate MO car ownership

[LindseyLohan]

I was just wondering if anyone has sold a car in Missouri and didn't know to report it via Notice of Sale or Bill of Sale? My wife sold an old car back in the summer of 08. We are having problems regarding property tax because we just bought a new car and they are saying we owe property tax for 2009 on the car we sold. They said we are basically screwed and will have to pay property tax on it until we can provide the NOS or BOS. I don't want to forge anything (buyers signature and name which I don't even know) and risk a felony but I don't know what else to do... 

All I can tell you about the buyer was he drove up from Wichita after seeing it on Craigslist and we signed over the title (thats apparently all you need in Kansas). I used to have his contact info but I think I finally threw it out thinking it had been long enough I wouldn't need it.

If you look here 

http://dor.mo.gov/mvdl/motorv/nos/

you see

A seller is not required to submit a NOS form on the following units:

5. Vehicles sold to an out of state purchaser

So we are going to try and play that card.

Has anyone else ran into this? How did you clear everything up? Please feel free to share other nightmare stories about MO car legalities.

[dangerboy]

You also have to tell your county that you no longer own the vehicle.  Every year they send out a form that lists the personal property they think you own, and you cross off items that you have sold.  Did you this?

[LindseyLohan]

I don't know if she did. I will find out if she got something like this. (we just married early this year)

For my stuff, I just check the Jackson county website every once and a while and pay if it says something is due. I don't know if I have ever seen one of these forms for myself...

Thanks.

[dangerboy]

They come after the first of the year, after you pay your previous year's tax bill.  It's all based on what you own on January 1st of each year. So you own a car on January 1st, 2010 and sell it on January 2nd, you have to pay taxes on it in December 2010.  Conversely, if you buy a car on Dec. 31st you get a whole year tax free.

[GRID]

You get them in the mail.  You have to return the form every year if you own the same cars or not.  Then they send the bill later.

[aknowledgeableperson]

If a vehicle is disposed of it needs to be taken off the tax rolls which, as others have stated, is done via a form sent out each year by the counties.  Otherwise how is the county to know you got rid of the vehicle?

[lock+load]

They come after the first of the year, after you pay your previous year's tax bill.  It's all based on what you own on January 1st of each year. So you own a car on January 1st, 2010 and sell it on January 2nd, you have to pay taxes on it in December 2010.  Conversely, if you buy a car on Dec. 31st you get a whole year tax free.

You get a year tax free if you buy the car Jan 2nd, not Dec 31st.  If you buy Jan 2 2010, you won't pay propert tax until Dec 2011.

The entire tag and property tax system is much more user friendly in KS.  It is all integrated so you pay the property tax when you renew your tags and you only have to deal with the county once, not twice. 

[nota]

If memory serves correctly, we had to pay 2007 taxes on a vehicle we sold before moving out of state in late October because we had owned it on Jan 1. We paid these in 2008. I've slept since then so can't remember all the particulars.

[GRID]

If memory serves correctly, we had to pay 2007 taxes on a vehicle we sold before moving out of state in late October because we had owned it on Jan 1. We paid these in 2008. I've slept since then so can't remember all the particulars.

You should have.

I just paid my JaCo taxes and my cars are now registered in MD.  It will be fun to scratch off the cars when they send out the declaration form in the spring.  No more car taxes.  And we bought a brand new car in spring of 2009 that I will not have to pay prop taxes on!!!!  My tax bill would have doubled had we stayed in MO.

It's odd that MD has no personal property taxes on cars while VA has very high car taxes, like 2-3 times as high as MO.

[Slappy the Wang]

So you sold a CAR without even considering a bill of sale or taking down the buyers info?  This is amazing to me.

[nota]

So you sold a CAR without even considering a bill of sale or taking down the buyers info?  This is amazing to me.

It's hard to tell who you are addressing here.

[LindseyLohan]

So you sold a CAR without even considering a bill of sale or taking down the buyers info?  This is amazing to me.

My wife just signed the title (we weren't married yet), I thought we should take the guys info, so I did. I remember going through a bunch of clutter one day and thinking I probably didn't need it anymore and threw it out, I hate paper. My wife ended up going somewhere in Independence and they made her pay a couple extra years of taxes 2009 and 2010 and took it off. Still bullshit. I wish it could just be built into the tagging of the car.

I moved around alot between the ages of 18 and 24 (accross states, accross counties). It seems like MO is always trying to fuck me on taxes. I lived in Kansas for two years and MO garnished my federal return because I didn't file a return the one year I was entirely working and living in KCK. It was getting so frustrating trying to get it cleared up I gave up.

I have this nightmare where I get arrested 30 years after missing payment on some tax I probably didn't owe that accrued some ungodly amount of interest.

[splash]

I had a property tax issue in MO for YEARS before it was finally cleared up.  I bought a car in 03 and moved to KC in 04.  I didn't have to pay property taxes the first year and I guess I slipped through the cracks when it came time to pay them for the first time and I didn't get a notice.  When it came time to pay them to KC, they had no notice of my car (naturally) and told me I'd have to take care of some paperwork with the county where I had previously lived.  I figured it wouldn't be a huge deal, but I was wrong, because the other county had no record my my car.  At some point the state was contacted and they didn't have a record of my car's VIN number.  Essentially, as far as the state of Missouri was concerned, my car did not exist.  My plates and tags were valid, but apparently not connected to the vehicle in their databases. 

I spent about 3 months with expired tags and made dozens of phone calls to both county offices trying to sort out the issue.  Neither county would take my money and kept saying that I had to pay the other county and no one at either office could figure out what exactly was going on or how to fix it. 

Eventually, I was put in contact with a head supervisor type and everyone decided that I needed to fax a ton of paperwork to my old county for review, then they faxed me back a paper I had to fill out, sign, and fax back to them, so they could fax me some kind of release form that I could present to the people here. 

I was only allowed to get tags for one year with that method, but was glad that everything worked out.  However, I pretty much had the same problem the following year.  I didn't get a notice, but contacted them immediately and there was yet another dispute about who I should be paying.  Thankfully, that problem was corrected in about a month.

[LindseyLohan]

It's always the moving part that makes it difficult...stay in Missouri or stay gone...