One way to do the math on Cash for Clunkers

SO...you took FEDZILLA up on its offer of $4500. dollars to trade in your old "Clunker" (interesting choice of words)? Well, let's see who got thebest of that "deal"... If you traded in a clunker worth $3500, you got $4500 off for an apparent"savings" of $1000. You could have gotten $3,500 if you had just traded the car in. So you really are $1,000 ahead (depending on your clunker's value) at this point. Not too bad. However, you WILL have to pay taxes on the $4500 come April 15th (something that no auto dealer will tell you). If you are in the 30% tax bracket, you will pay $1350 on that $4500. So, rather than save $1000, you will actually pay an extra $350. to the feds. In addition, you traded in a car that was most likely paid for. Now you have 4 or 5 years of payments on a car that you did not need, trading in a "clunker" that was costing you less to run than the paymentsthat you will now be making. Even if you save $1,000. dollars a year in gas due to better mileage, you're still gonna be in the red for five years....hello? But wait, it gets even better: you also got ripped off by the dealer. For example, the month before the "cash for clunkers" program started, every dealer here in LA was selling the Ford Focus with all the goodies including A/C, auto transmission, power windows, etc for $12,500.because competition was stiff due to poor sales from the stalled economy. When "cash for clunkers" came along, they stopped discounting them and instead sold them at the list price of $15,500. So, you paid $3000 more than you would have the month before. Honda, Toyota , and Kia played thesame list price game that Ford and Chevy did. Now let's do the math... You traded in a car worth: $3500 You got a discount of: $4500 --------- Net so far +$1000 But you have to pay: $1350 in taxes on the $4500 --------- Net so far: -$350 (that's minus...in the red) And you paid: $3000 more than the car was selling forthe month before --------- Net Loss: -$3350 We could also add in the additional taxes (sales tax, state tax, dealer prep, etc.) on the extra $3000 that you paid for the car, along with the Five years of interest on the car loan; but let's just stop here while you kick yourself. Suffice it to say that those costs will be much higherthan any savings you get from "better mileage". So who actually made out on the deal? FEDZILLA collected taxes on the car along with taxes on the $4500 they "gave" you. The car dealers made an extra $3000 or more on every car they sold along with the kickbacks from the manufacturers and the loan companies. Manufacturers got to dump lotsof cars they could not give away the month before. Lots of good or repairable used cars got taken off the market, crushed and sold as scrap metal to (ready for this?) CHINA ! (Look it up...) And the poor consumer got saddled with even more debt that they cannot afford. FEDZILLA'S merry men (who promised that people making less than $250,000.would pay "not one red cent more in taxes") will make millions in new taxrevenues after convincing Joe Consumer that he was getting $4500 in "free" money from the "government" In fact, Joe was giving away his $3500 car and paying an additional $3350 for the privilege. Chicago politics gone global...with an agenda. If you find errors in this math, please let me know.. .being a simple guy, I'm always willing to learn new things; and if you took "advantage" of the Clunkers deal, I have some swamp land down in Florida that's for sale... And remember, these are the same Einsteins who want to take control of our health care system. Hold on to your wallet!!

A friend of mine sent me this in an email.

Sounds about right. I tried to tell someone they would most likely have to pay taxes on the benefit come tax time. They thought I was nuts.

Then comes the news that September car sales are in the toilet. Dozens of people said this would happen. People who were about to buy a car anyway signed up a bit early and now there is a huge lul right before the holidays. I understand that is a slow time in the business of selling cars to consumers in the best of times.

Yup, cluster-snafu from start to finish.