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This week's winner in the license-plate game
By adamg on Sat, 09/24/2011 - 9:03am
Joe spotted this plate on Binney Street near Kendall Square last night (so anyone know a sultanette attending MIT?).
Compare to this plate from Guam, once spotted at the Burlington Mall.
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Comments
Geography lesson
Binney Street is in East Cambridge.
Always has to be one, doesn't there?
NOBODY CARES!
Yes it is
Which is why I made the crack about a sultanette at MIT, and, yet, I wrote "Harvard" instead of "Kendall." Kids, let this be a lesson to you: No writing until after coffee.
But it ends...
IN Kendall Square, so Adam was correct.
Plates
I wanna know how having that plate is legal in itself. I mean there's nothing stopping a Canadian or Mexican car from being on the road here, but when you have an car like that with plates from a country where it would cost a semi fortune to ship. It kinda makes the cops wonder if its fake or not. I'm sure whoever will get pulled over a ton just to be harassed. (if was a cop, I'd do it too..)
Knowing around here, its not. If you can afford to go to school here from Dubai, then you could pay to have your car shopped from here. then again if they can afford that, they could just BUY a car here.
Its still a REALLY odd plate to see on the mainland here. Usually you don't see that.
Here is what I'm thinking.
You live in another country but come here to buy the car and you are in the United States for a valid reason as a non resident (work, school, visa, ets) You pay taxes in the US on the purchase. You then register the car in your home country and pay your fee there. Then you get the plates and put them on your car in the US which you can legally do since you don't live here but are going to use your car here for a shot period of time before you ship it back. You still probably need to have insurance here, but the plates are probably still valid.
And Guam would be easier since it is the US anyway.
tax cheat
"You pay taxes in the US on the purchase."
Bzzzzzt. Guess where sales tax is collected?
At the registry. When you register your car. For MA plates.
They're also skipping out on excise taxes, which on a Cayenne, is a lot of money.
Funny how you were complaining the other day about bikers not paying taxes, but this rich asshole skips out on sales, excise and registry fees AND drives a very heavy vehicle that wears the road, and you're all "eeeeeey, ok with me!"
First off I wasn't complaining about bikers
And different states have different taxes when it comes to auto sales and use taxes. I also don't know if the feds would apply a tax for goods taken out of the country, especially for something like a Porshe.
And if they are not residents, why would or should they pay an excise tax?
The Registry collected your sales tax?
This doesn't sound correct to me.
When I bought a car in April, I paid my 6.25% before I registered the car. The dealer, not the registry collected the sales tax, just as any other merchant does, on my in-Massachusetts purchase.
My (admittedly dated) understanding of the cross border sales tax issue is that if I had bought the car in NY (but not registered it there), I would have had to provide the MA registry with proof that I paid sales tax (at the rate of 6.25% or above) in New York prior to the Registry registering the car in MA. If I had bought the car in a jurisdiction in which the sales tax was 4%, and I had paid only that, I'd be on the hook to the Registry for the 2.5% balance.
Registry does collect.
In a transaction with a dealer, the dealer collects the tax. If you buy a car in a private transaction, you pay at the registry.
Transferring Plates
You don't pay tax if you bring a vehicle to MA.
Notice how the plate fits in the back? Notice that it isn't a plate shape in use in the US? They probably brought the car with them.
I will soon be bringing a car into the state that was registered elsewhere, and I won't be paying sales tax on it.
If you buy it from out of state you need to pay the tax.
I think thats what they were talking about.
wow how did someone from
wow how did someone from dubai afford to ship a car to boston. i cant even begin to imagine... i better think about this for a while and then write something about it online. affects me personally anyways peace
The cost isn't a big deal. If
The cost isn't a big deal. If it was, foreign cars wouldn't be sold in this country, right?
Not sure that's legal
According to Wikipedia:
Many jurisdictions have reciprocal agreements with other jurisdictions, allowing license plates from other jurisdictions to be used in their jurisdiction. For example, if a vehicle is registered in any U.S. state (including Washington, D.C. and its territories), under federal law that vehicle may be driven into any other U.S. state, and, under international agreements and treaties, into some other countries including Canada and Mexico.
Makes sense for North American plates to be able to move around without re-registering every time a car crosses a boarder, but I'd be surprised if we had the same agreements with the UAE. But anything is possible when money is involved!
It probably is legal
Per US Customs and Border Protection
So if Dubai is a signatory to that convention, they may keep it registered there for up to a year while in the US.
Probably isn't a signatory
...since it's not a country. :o)
Oh yeah.. Hahaha
The UAE, of course. Not Dubai :-)
good point eeka
Yeah Dubai isnt a country, but the UAE is. Then again if you sent your United States car over to Europe, you wouldn't have a "United States" Plate, but a Massachusetts one. Maybe Dubai is what we'd consider a 'state'.
Still again, odd plate to be.
And to the poster who said shipping a car is expensive. Lets look at where the car is coming from.. a OIL RICH NATION. Spending 5k to ship a car over seas is pocket change to these guys. Again if they can afford to send their kid to the US for school, then they can afford the 5k to ship a car. And if this an "American" version of the Cayenne, they paid export taxes. (or bought it directly from Porsche before it made it to the United States, which is the case most of the time)
I would guess that
they call that an emirate, amirite?
Reciprocity
My nephew and his shipmates in the USCG drove vehicles with US Government plates around Dubai when he was training there.
Why shouldn't it work both ways? Probably a student or grad student who isn't a permanent resident.
Ah, thanks!
My cursory googling didn't turn this up. Log under "something I learned today". :)
"Black and white...
....is always grey?"
FM plates?
I saw a car on 3 in Burlington the other day that had plates I didn't recognize. It was the standard US dimension and printing style, I don't recall if the lettering was printed or raised but I believe it was printed, and the plate had a federal-looking logo in the top-left corner with no label, and in the right a logo featuring the initials "FM". The federalesque logo resembles the FEMA logo, but again, no text. The design was fairly simple, a combination of a salmon color on top with turquoise on the bottom, with a horizontal arc as the divider line between the two (all from memory).
When I saw "FM", the first thing that came to mind was Federated Micronesia, but the plates there don't look anything like these. "Federal Magistrate" and "Federal Management" didn't turn up anything. The car wasn't anything fance, just some crossover SUV.
Sounds like a diplomatic
Sounds like a diplomatic plate, like the one here.
Bingo
That's exactly the design, but it didn't say "Diplomat", it didn't have the property disclaimer at the bottom, and the logo in the upper-left wasn't multi-color.
Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service
"FM" prefix on a fed license plate is for " Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service" per http://www.worldlicenceplates.com/usa/US_XGOV.html
The plate is cool, but...
While it's kind of cool to see such a plate, I think that it's more interesting when you go down to, say, Brighton Ave. on a Friday or Saturday night, and see the 19 year olds from the Middle East driving cars that are not routinely available for purchase in the U.S.
The best, however, is when, on occasion, there is some kid who is very close to the actual leadership of one of these countries coming to school here. They roll the car right out of the back of the plane at Logan and drive on over to BU (or wherever, but I feel like BU has more than its share of folks like this). I've seen that routine a few times.
At which point do these folks start trashing units and annoying their neighbors at the Ritz though?
Must cost a fortune . . .
. . . To have that shipped here? Times must be rough for these guys. An uncle in- law worked in Saudi Arabia for years- not uncommon back in his day 30 years ago to see two two year old luxury cars just abandoned on a stretch of highway- they would break down and abandon them- and just get new ones.
Way back when I was a student
Way back when I was a student from Ohio studying abroad I saw a car with an Ohio plate (Cuyahoga County) in Hungary