Florida Sales Tax

[Angela]

The office I referred to is the CG district office closest to the residence of the owner. That being said, it could be that the listing of the closest office as the home port may only apply to inspected vessels that are documented. I brought this topic up in class today, and the instructor said he would verify this.

My boat used to be an inspected vessel....no "home port" on my USCG doumentation - it was the same certificate I carry now. If you figure out where this "home port" comes into play, please let us know - this is something we've never heard of and it's not on our papers and I cannot find any reference to it anywhere in the NVDC database of information.

 

[Brian Degulis]

I've had quite a few inspected vessels and I don't ever recall seeing anything but hailing port on the document.


Brian

 

[Maynard Rupp]

When we documented our sailboat back in 1988, we had two choices for our registered port. We could either use the name of the city we reside in or the city where our Coast Guard District Office is located. I don't know if that was called a "hailing port" or "home port". It is the name that we had to put on our transom in 4" letters. Our two choices were Grosse Pointe Woods MI. or Cleveland Ohio. Cleveland is where the CG district office is located. These rules may have changed, but that's the way it was in 1988.

 

[Pascal]

I hate to break this news to you Randy but it looks like your school needs to update their manuals... The CURRENT documentation application has no reference to homeport or a uscg office

http://www.uscg.mil/hq/cg5/nvdc/forms/cg1258.pdf

and as owners of currently documented vessels have confirmed there is no such thing as a homeport on the certificate of documentation

for INSPECTED vessels, since the inspection process is handled locally, the inspection certificate may list a local office but it is totally irrelevant to this tax discussion

 

[Freeebird]

When we documented our sailboat back in 1988, we had two choices for our registered port. We could either use the name of the city we reside in or the city where our Coast Guard District Office is located. I don't know if that was called a "hailing port" or "home port". It is the name that we had to put on our transom in 4" letters. Our two choices were Grosse Pointe Woods MI. or Cleveland Ohio. Cleveland is where the CG district office is located. These rules may have changed, but that's the way it was in 1988.

Yep, the rules have changed, but the CG material supplied for class hasn't. I confirmed this information this morning as the instructor did make good on his promise to figure this out.

Ang, I checked with the guy who mentioned the $600 for a change in hailing port, but he said he was using some legal outfit to do this for him. Still sounds high, but who knows/cares?

Pascal,

 

[Boatsb]

Documentation may indeed havelimited value if you don't travel outside the US and indeed even the Bahamas accept a regular registration

Documentation is cheap and doesn't cost anything to renew.

The point wasn't missed, the original post stated that the buyer wasn't going to bring the boat to florida so at that point it s critical that their address dowsnt appear on the documentation

if a boat doesn't stay in the state where it is purchased, if it is not brought in the owner state of residence and as long as you follow the rules of the states it visits, it is pretty easy to avoid paying sales tax, legally.

By definition avoiding sales tax can't be legal. There may be a way to minimize the tax but to not declare it as a purchase or to move it state to state will not excuse you from paying the tax. To register in a place with no sales tax and to take it there as legally required is the only way to do that.

 

[Avenger]

IFL is diffrent that many states. In NY a documented boat was not required to be registered and no one from the state ever asked for sales tax. Technicaly is was due but they didn't go after it.

Just to update, they do now. I think they got wise to all the $$$ they were losing on boats ported in Wilmington, DE and started cracking down. Probably around 1988 or so they sent notices to all documented vessels in the state and you had to either prove that the tax was paid at purchase, or you had to pony up. Then a few years later they figured out how to produce a revenue stream and required all documented boats to be registered, of course with renewal fees, so they could "prove" that sales tax had been paid.

When I bought my boat I didn't pay sales tax to the seller, and because I was taking so long to get the work done on it I didn't register it for almost two years. My thinking was, it's not in service so it doesn't need to be registered, and I'd be dipped if I was going to pay sales tax on a boat I wasn't able to use. About six months after I registered it and paid the sales tax I got a nasty-gram from NYS Taxation and Finance about the sales tax. It took that long for the CG documentation to catch up with it. All I had to do was fax a copy of my registration receipt showing sales tax paid. The letter I got was full of deadlines I hadn't met, and penalites thereof, but I explained the discrepancy to the auditor about the boat being out of service, and his response was "We really don't care, as long as the tax gets paid." The only thing that surprised me was that they didn't close the case internally since the doc. number is on the registration.

 

[lbkjj]

One of boating's little secrets is that Rhode Island does not have a sales tax on new or used boat purchases. Some years ago, the boat manufacturers in RI got this law passed to help the industry. I have a Summer home in RI and bought a new boat there, free of tax. I checked into bringing the boat to FL, which is my primary residence, but learned I would have to pay FL sales tax on the boat because I am a legal resident of FL, even though the boat is registered in RI.
Many boaters from Massachusetts and Connecticut buy boats in RI, keep them ar RI marinas and avoid their states sales tax. You can register a boat in RI without being a resident.

 

[Mel Tucker]

The sales tax on boats in North Carolina is 3% of sale price not counting any trade-in allowance or a maximum of $1500.00. Sent my check to them yesterday for tax on the 43 DC I bought in Florida and brought to NC last Sunday.

Mel Tucker
Taylor G 43 DC

 

[Mel Tucker]

I just spoke with the former Secretary of the Florida Department of Revenue. He said the sales tax will have to be paid to the state where boat is docked or to the state owner is a resident. He suggested the person needing the answer to his question about Florida sales tax call 850 488-5050 and ask for boat sales tax specialist John Caccitore for the current Florida sales tax law on boats.

Mel Tucker