how is maine (Millinocket: sales, insurance, credit card)

[scomar8]

having ben born and raised in the town of mexico maine i have since been living in various states. whenever i meet people and tell them i am from maine the usual reply is
i hear maine is nice but i have never been there. its very cold isnt it.
well i tell them it is great but to be honest we cant afford to live there because of taxes. we are retired and maine is just out of our price bracket.
it will always be because of the lack of attempts to draw big businesas to the area so taxes are piled on to the residents.
i usually tell people that maine is anti big business and although they would like fewer and lower taxes the people do not want to have the increase in population that business would bring so therefore they will continue to see taxes increase year afrwe year.
it cost under sixty dollars to get plates for two cars in n.c. in maine what would it cost.

[forest beekeeper]

Hmm, that is too bad.

Having moved around my entire career, we decided to move to Maine for my retirement.

It is so much cheaper than many places that I have lived.

[Acadianlion]

Originally Posted by scomar8

having ben born and raised in the town of mexico maine i have since been living in various states. whenever i meet people and tell them i am from maine the usual reply is
i hear maine is nice but i have never been there. its very cold isnt it.
well i tell them it is great but to be honest we cant afford to live there because of taxes. we are retired and maine is just out of our price bracket.
it will always be because of the lack of attempts to draw big businesas to the area so taxes are piled on to the residents.
i usually tell people that maine is anti big business and although they would like fewer and lower taxes the people do not want to have the increase in population that business would bring so therefore they will continue to see taxes increase year afrwe year.
it cost under sixty dollars to get plates for two cars in n.c. in maine what would it cost.

Maine is more expensive than _________________fill in the blank. Really. This is simply not true.

License plates for two cars in Maine will cost $50.00 per year. That is FIFTY DOLLARS PER YEAR, OR TWENTY FIVE DOLLARS PER YEAR FOR EACH CAR.
That is the answer to your question.

However if your question is how much does it cost to own and operate a motor vehicle in Maine each year, the answer is different.

1. You will have to pay an excise tax on the motor vehicle to the town that the car is garaged in. The tax is based on the cost new of the vehicle and goes down each year for six years until it hits the lowest rung on the ladder, and then the excise tax stays at that level. This tax goes to the TOWN.
The more expensive vehicle that you own, the higher the tax.

2. You will have to carry liability insurance on the car. Maine is a compulsory insurance state (as most states are). The liability insurance will be priced according to your driving record, the number of operators on the vehicle, how the vehicle is being used and the kind and type of vehicle that you own. Liability insurance will range anywhere from $125 per year to $1200 per year or more depending on various factors. Liability insurance is NOT a tax, is NOT paid to the State of Maine or to a town. Liability insurance is your responsibility and the rates are dependent primarily on your driving history.

3. In North Carolina plates for private passenger vehicles and light trucks (under 4000 pounds) cost $28 per year. You must pay excise taxes on owned vehicles equal to 3% of the cost new, or 3% of the cost used according to a table of values maintained by the North Carolina DMV. This is a tax paid to the state so the local town gets no benefit from this at all. Is this less or more expensive than the Maine excise tax on vehicles? I'll bet it is more, but Maine also has a sales tax on vehicles that occurs when the vehicle is purchased and North Carolina does not.

4. There are added fees for registering and operating vehicles in certain counties and cities in North Carolina.

So the bottom line appears to me to be that the cost of vehicle operation in North Carolina is probably pretty much the same as it is in Maine, and may be less depending on where the vehicle is located and the kind of vehicle that it is.

I have been reading posts on this list for some time now, and I have lived here in Maine for quite a long time. I have also lived in other places and basically my experience is that while statistics may indicate one thing, the actual fact of spending dollars on a day to day basis shows that Maine is not more and in most cases, far less expensive to live than other places. It is my observation that people confuse life style and personal choices with taxes and regulation.

Big business is not going to be a solution to anything that anyone perceives as being wrong with Maine. Maine is a state of small businesses, and the solution to economic issues is to preserve and protect the "Maine brand" and enable Maine's small businesses to grow and provide more and better wages and salaries to Maine workers. The only thing that big businesses do for Maine is to inflate the local economy for a short period of time, and then close their operations down and move somewhere else creating more problems than were there to begin with. An excellent example of this is MBNA that came to Maine as a BIG employer that built a lot of pretty green and cream buildings in varios places and then got bought out and closed a lot of them.

The basic numbers determine the economic strength of the state: there are 1.2 million people in the entire state of Maine. They are scattered out through an area that is larger than more than one half of the other states in the nation. Companies employing more than fifty people do not necessarily help the economy, because more concentration of labor in one area or another can create a depression in that economy if anything happens to that "big business". If anyone needs an example of this look at Millinocket since the paper mill closed. There was nothing else there to take up the "shock" of the big business employer closing down.

Many, many successful small businesses mean much more to Maine than do fewer bigger ones.

Can people "make it in Maine"? The answer is yes, but how well may depend on life style and choices that people make. I was in the little store not far from here on Saturday getting gasoline. A young woman came in and bought a package of cigarettes, and paid $6.50 using a credit card. That woman's smoking, lung cancer and poverty will ultimately be her responsibility: she paid $6.50 for nothing, but it was her choice.

[forest beekeeper]

... 1. You will have to pay an excise tax on the motor vehicle to the town that the car is garaged in. ...

2. You will have to carry liability insurance on the car. Maine is a compulsory insurance state (as most states are). ...

Change the phrase 'excise tax' to 'property tax', and just about every state is the same.

... the actual fact of spending dollars on a day to day basis shows that Maine is not more and in most cases, far less expensive to live than other places. It is my observation that people confuse life style and personal choices with taxes and regulation. ...

I agree.

... Can people "make it in Maine"? The answer is yes, but how well may depend on life style and choices that people make. I was in the little store not far from here on Saturday getting gasoline. A young woman came in and bought a package of cigarettes, and paid $6.50 using a credit card. That woman's smoking, lung cancer and poverty will ultimately be her responsibility: she paid $6.50 for nothing, but it was her choice.

True