Colorado vehicle taxes? (buying, school, costs)

[enikkor]

We're planning to retire in Colorado. We have three vehicles which are fully paid for, relatively new with reasonably low miles. My wife suggest that we downsize, and trade the two cars to a real nice minivan, and keep the truck. Since the cars are relatively new with low miles and look brand new, they have a lot of trade in value which will put us in a nicer model.I found out about the vehicle tax for new vehicles in Colorado, which tax 85% of the MSRP X 2% for new cars.? For trucks it's 75% of MSRP.

Since the Nissan is 5 yrs old with only 25K miles, the Honda Coupe 4 yrs old with 18K miles, I thought of just bringing all the three vehicles to Colorado and drive them until the wheels literally fall off.

I believe after five years, the taxes gets dramatically lower. I know the logical thing is just to downsize, but I did not realize the tax burden of new vehicles in the state.

Any opinion pro or against any way, I appreciate.

[reed303]

Larimer County has an on-line estimator that will show you what to expect, and a breakdown of how the total is arrived at. You need model year, MSRP and weight info

Registration Fee Estimator

[pabrew]

When we registered our vehicles after moving to CO this year, it cost only a couple hundred dollars each. Not chump change, but relative to all the other moving costs not a significant expense at all. If I owned three vehicle outright I'd bring them & register them. Much cheaper than buying a new vehicle in a year or two if one of the ones you kept unexpectedly died. And when we considered the dramatically cheaper land & school taxes we pay here in CO versus NYS, the vehicle tax seemed a great deal!