I've been a resident of Oregon and just recently moved to Washington in late 2003. I purchased my boat in Oregon back in 2002 when I lived there. The registration just expired so I went in to register the boat in Washington and was told that I would have to pay sales tax. This doesn't seem to make sense as I was a valid Oregnian at the time of sale...

Has anybody else had this issue?

Hmmmmm. I would talk to one of their supervisors, or go to the DOL's home page and send them an email. I can see if you lived here and were only temporarily living in Oregon. But if you were a legal resident down there and moved up here, then that doesn't seem right. If you bought, licensed, and relicensed again in Oregon, they should have no right to add a sales tax on boat here. Personally, go to the DOL's site and email them, even if you already paid. You may get a refund. I know there are people who try to scam the system. But if you were a legal Oregon resident, they shouldn't hose you.

Good luck getting a waiver. That was my experience too, with the car, truck and boat. I moved up from another state too, military, so it wasn't just a move here, but I got whacked for some fair chunks of change. As I recall, at the time they got the tax based on the original MSRP too, not what was paid. A buddy of mine never did license his boat while he was stationed here for that reason.

Welcome to Washington Twig we never met a tax we didn't like....how else are we gonna pay for those $600,000.00 outhouses for the whinos in the city parks? We've got $35 license tabs but I just paid $100 becuase of the RTA tax....oh and if you live in the Seattle city limits they will tack on a car tax to pay for the monorail. We don't want you to drive or have a boat here . We want you to ride the bus , light rail or the monorail and leave that boat behind.

That is Washington for ya. I bought a Honda Accord work car a couple years ago for $2000. It had 242,000 miles and was a little rough but a great work car. When I went to the DOL they flat out told me I was lying about the price and since it bluebooked at $4400 thats what they would base the sale off of. Needless to say I was pissed so they told me to take it to a car lot and get it appraised. That cost me $50 bucks but when I told the guy why I was getting the car appraised the salesman started laughing and wrote "the car is worth $1200" He then told me too lose my original sales reciet and give them this. I would have been happy to pay the tax on the $2000 but after all that I was greatly pleased to only pay off $1200.

Yep. unless you can prove you paid sales tax in another state Washington will make you pay sales tax on recreational vehicles (boats, motrocycles, etc) when you bring them in state. And even if you paid sales tax in another state, if it is lower than WA, you'll have to pay the difference.

Thankfully, when I moved here ~10 years ago I had saved my sales reciept for the motorcycle I'd bought years before in Texas and only had to pay the ~2% difference.

Some guy I used worked with moved here from Michigan and had a ~$40,000 sailboat he'd bought there years before. He couldn't produce the original sales receipt, so WA wanted him to pay sales tax again on the whole amount in order to get it registered. He ended up having to sell it as he couldn't afford to pay the tax and didn't want to pay moorage on a boat he couldn't use .

I understand this is not exactly what u where looking for in this post but,Just tell them u bought hte boat for 100.00 u pay the 9$ in tax and go fishin.This would be no different then having some one write up a bill of sale for less than you paid.any ways just a thought

Loomis,
They are not going by the bill of sale anymore they will actually look up blue book on the item and charge off that. It's a bunch of crap.

I'll say it's a bunch of crap. I bought a 10' Porta-Bote from the sportsman's show last year, ordered it from the factory in the midwest. Then I went to license it (thinking I'd be paying around $20) and they hit me for sales tax! I told them I'd row the damn boat around instead of using my trolling motor for that much.

Twig, as you can see everyone here is very open to the way that washington state uses and abuses us with the represive taxes that they have. I am originally from N.Y., and i thought the taxes there were bad, not even close. Bought a boat that needed alot of work, and they tried to charge me the blue book price , untill i showed them a picture of it, then they charged me only what i paid, it was in rough shape when i bought it......Good luck. Sell it to a relative, or REALLY good friend in oregan, then just use it up here.......

I transferred my db and trailer in jan of this yr and they went off of what was written in as the sale price.the only people concerned with the value is the insurance company and i told them it was gold plated.

buddy moved here from NY and they were going to ding him sales tax on everything he had, including his 74 Ford pickup.
He took in some copies of his utility bills to show that he was a legal resident of NY and they were satisfied with that.

Another hint. I no longer go to the DOL, I head to one of the contracted places. Everyone at the DOL has a chip on their shoulder and act like the NSA or CIA, have to inspect everything. Head into an independent and tell them whats up and they usually shrug it off and take care of business.