We opted to purchase our Touring model in CA rather than in Colorado. We had a few hiccups with the incentives and prices offered via the online car purchase sites as many of the discounts were based on registering the Clarity in CA. We did find a dealer, Honda of Oakland, that would honor the discounted purchase price. The savings were substantially above the $750 MSRP discount offered in Colorado.
Honda of Oakland understood we would be registering in Colorado and correctly computed the sales tax collected at the time of purchase based on our zip code (the Honda system they used at closing was designed to include this feature). When registering the Clarity in Boulder the DMV worked through the dealer to confirm the tax was collected (took about 2 weeks) and paid to CA. The CO DMV used an agreement between CA and CO to recoup the sales tax collected.
Prior to purchase I confirmed with the CO DMV the process of registering and out-of-state purchase and they proved to be super helpful. All I needed to provide was the closing statement from the purchase and the CA title. Two trips to the local DMV, our registration was finalized and we are loving our Clarity.
That is great to hear. Just to verify, the California dealer only collected sales tax based on the Colorado tax rate? Sales tax in California for a Clarity can be up to $3,000 depending on the city and county where it is purchased. I looked on Colorado's website and it looks like Colorado sales tax would be about $500, plus whatever county and local tax would be. So I'm guessing you paid less than $1,000 in sales tax?
I wonder if any other states have reciprocal agreements with California. Those that don't will still usually waive sales tax if it was already paid to California, unless California sales tax is lower than local tax (unlikely) in which case you owe the difference. But if California tax paid was higher than local tax would have been they do not refund the difference, so you can wind up paying higher sales tax than if purchased locally. But then again you can't really get much in the way of a discount when purchasing locally.
It's even worse in Georgia where I live because they recently changed to VAT (value added tax) which they don't consider as sales tax, so they could care less if you paid tax to another state, you still owe the full amount of Georgia VAT. If I had purchased my car in California I would have had to pay $3,000 or so in sales tax to California, and then about $2,000 VAT to Georgia. Not good. If I had been in that situation it would have definitely paid for me to have the car shipped to Georgia to avoid California sales tax. Fortunately for me when I bought my Clarity last April they still had several at local dealers and the discounts were insane, I got a $7,000 discount on a brand new 2018 touring manufactured in Nov 2018. And the $7,500 tax credit on top of that. But if I were to buy another one I would probably be looking at buying in California and having it shipped. Or I could order one but then there would likely be no discount. Or try and find a deal in another state, but discounts seem unlikely unless purchased in California. And even then as you experienced you have to find a California dealer that is willing to give you a good discount even though they won't be getting any incentive from Honda since you won't be registering it in California.
People in Arizona are in a unique situation as it is a neighboring state so of course it is quite feasible to purchase a Clarity in California and drive it back to Arizona. They have to pay California sales tax which is typically several hundred dollars higher than Arizona, but then they don't have to pay Arizona tax. Having it shipped would cost about the same as the tax savings and also entail all kinds of hassle, especially since it's very difficult to find a dealer willing to ship out of state. So for someone in Arizona it's usually best to shop all around California for the best deal then just fly out to purchase the car then drive it home and take a few hundred dollars hit on overpaid sales tax.
