Topic: BS inspection at Tax Assessor!
My wife spotted a Freecycle posting the other day. Somebody bought a new car a few years ago, got offered next to zero trade-in for their current car, so kept it as a spare. It apparently served them well until now in that respect, but they were moving on 10/1 and didn't have room for the car at their new place.
They offered the car for free to somebody who could commit to meeting them at noon last Monday, then head to the courthouse with them to transfer title. I think several people responded to the posting, but we were selected to receive the car.
It is a 95 Cutlass with 200K on the clock. Not bad for free, but also easy to see why the dealer offered pocket change as trade-in.
Anyway, at the courthouse, they filled out the paperwork. To report the price, they checked the box that said "gift".
Boy, did that ever raise the eyebrows of the bureaucrat recording the transaction. She asked, "OK, if this is a gift, how is the donor related to the recipient?" They aren't related, except that they both Freecycle.
The bureaucrat absolutely could not believe that somebody would give a car to a stranger, so she started going down a list. "Spouses?" No. "Siblings?" No. "Cousins?" No. "Registered non-profit organization?" No.
"Then it wasn't a gift. I'll have to look up the blue book value, and that's how much we'll base the tax on." Apparently the law (Texas) changed last month so that only certain categories of people can receive a car for free and call it a gift.
Now, I wasn't there to look in the book myself, but I'm kind of sure it didn't show value deductions for things like broken a/c, no undented body panels, or windows that keep popping off their tracks.
So, basically, had we exaggerated the price and claimed it was $300, instead of the $0 truth, it would have cost less to register than it cost for telling the truth.
Moral of the story: something believable trumps something that is true. I guess that applies here, too.