The way it works in Florida
I am a Pennsylvania resident, and just recently bought a used H54 in FL. I was given the option of *NOT* paying sales tax, if it was my intent not to use or keep the boat in FL. If you don't intend to use the boat in FL, you have 90 days to remove it, after which you must send the FL Dept of Revenue receipts for dockage and fuel, as proof that the boat is out of FL waters. You are then not allowed to return to FL for 6 months, and thereafter, cannot keep the boat in FL for more than 180 days/yr. FL is very specific about their definition of intent. If a corporation buys the boat, and any of its officers or directors lives in FL, then you have to pay sales tax, regardless of the practical intent of where the boat will ultimately be sailed. I naturally wanted to opt for not paying the FL sales tax, but ran into a lot of conflicting advice on what was legal and what wasn't. Most states assume a boat spends most of its time in one state's waters, and that's the state that's entitled to collect sales tax. So for me, Delaware looked attractive. It has no sales tax, and is near the Chesapeake (where I would move the boat for the summer season). But I also wanted to keep the boat in FL for winters, and FL has day counting restrictions for out-of-state boats (I think it's 180 days max). To add to the confusion, I discovered that some states are "title" states and some aren't. MD & FL are "title" states, DE isn't. Not that this seemed that relevant, since my boat was to be federally documented. But these were the factoids that the employees at these different state bureaus kept throwing at me. In the end, after consuming way too much aspirin over this whole thing, I opted to pay FL its sales tax, which entitles me to keep "Impulse" there as much as I like. For summers on the Chesapeake, I will essentially be a visiting out-of-state boat. I don't know anything about CA sales & use tax laws. However, years ago, when I was the treasurer for a small manufacturer in Phila, I was amazed at the effort that the CA Board of Equalization put in to make sure we were following their regs. I used to get 5 page letters from some bureaucrat who wanted to make sure that we were collecting sales tax for the 5 or so customers we had in CA. These weren't form letters, either. This guy would go on & on about what their regs said, and how we weren't in perfect compliance. There couldn't have been more than a few hundred dollars of sales tax at issue, but he pursued us like we were GM. Having said that, if the CA Board of Equalization is still equally rabid about enforcement, I'd be very careful about a transaction where big bucks are involved. Eric Lorgus s/v Impulse 83H54
