Montana LLC's

[phorner]

Just a heads up regarding the Montana LLC registered coaches.

A friend of mine has just recently received notice from the State of Massachusetts. Apparently the state is demanding back taxes, interest, penalties, etc. not only for the current coach, but also for the one owned by them previously. Not a pretty picture as the dollars are very high.

It looks as though the state compared a list of LLC registered vehicles against a list of state residents.

No matter how this turns out, there will certainly be the cost of defending their position as well as many sleepless nights.

Nearly every state is experiencing a fiscal crisis and I'm sure that they have attorneys working overtime trying to figure out ways to add revenues to their budgets.

This situation was resolved this past summer. The owner of the bus ended up writing a check for $105,000. The "original" tax liability was about $35,000. Interest and penalties added $70,000 to the tab.

Commonly most states will negotiate the amount owed seeking primarily the original tax.

Not in this case.

[truk4u]

Paul,

That is scary stuff and will only get worse in our economic times. I mentioned this before, but the states are buying the data base from Montana and then matching the names. Here's the website to order the data base just for fun: https://app.mt.gov/cgi-bin/corprecords/corprecords.cgi

[Reagan Sirmons]

Further to this discussion on Montana LLC's, in the State of Texas on motorcoaches, the tax is not a sales tax but a road use tax. THe road use tax is calculated at 6.25% while the sales tax is an 8.25% fee. The Business Analysis REsearch Team is active on this subject and the assistant to the Comptroller of Texas is heading up the initiative. I talked extensively with them on this just 10 days ago. In addition, in Texas, a 1% surcharge has to be paid on the full sales price if a vehicle weights over 14,000 pounds.
Ron's case in Florida is interesting in that he dissolved a LLC that was outstanding. The legislative process is thorough and the tax planning authorities know their business. I would postulate for discussion that if the LLC existed on a motrcoach and the LLC was indeed originally set up with the obvious intent of evading a tax that was due on the coach in the state of the previous owner of the LLC, then the LLC was void by definition and had no standing in the transaction.
Pres