Comments on: Cash for Clunkers Taxable Income?

By: Cash for Clunkers Tax Rules – The Truth

Cash for Clunkers Tax Rules – The Truth — Mon, 31 May 2010 06:06:01 +0000

[...] Cash for Clunkers Taxable [...]

By: saboth

saboth — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 14:38:59 +0000

I traded in my 93 F150. It was worth $1,200. I got $4,500 for it. It got about 14mpg combined, and probably would have needed about $2,000 in repairs in the next year or so (it was my daily driver). I now have a new Hyundai Elantra Touring that is averaging about 31 mpg, and has a 5 year/60,000 mile all-inclusive warranty. I paid $12,300 after all taxes, tags, fees (sticker price was $20,000).

By: Janette

Janette — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:28:39 +0000

Three in my extended family traded in. Two just finished pharmacy school and one of the struggling families. All bought new with payments- but what they bought was in the 12,000. range- so their payments will be gone before the car is old. I think it was better to give money this way than simply give money.
They should have done it BEFORE they bailed out GM- just to have it fail.

By: Maxwells

Maxwells — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 20:41:23 +0000

I understand this “Cash for Clunkers” was first conducted in Europe and was a great success. The US had even met with Germany for advice before starting it up here in the US.

The European programs “success” may be the fact they required purchasing locally built cars to stimulate “their” own economy and not the Worlds. What also helped keep their economy going was their old “clunkers” were not destroyed like here in the US, they were resold and exported which also generated another industry and another source of revenue.

They did things differently here so they shouldn’t expect to see the same results.

President Obama is now going to learn first-hand why so many people were driving these “clunkers” in the first place. It was all they could afford!

Getting people a $4,500 down-payment only got them qualified enough to get out of the Dealerships front door.

And within 3-months, reality will sink-in and these people are going to be struggling to make New Car payments and much higher insurance premiums then they’ve ever seen before.

And with no supply of cheap “clunkers” around, it will be very difficult for these same people to ever secure their own payment-free transportation again.

On the upside, it will create many New ‘Repo’ jobs, albeit temporary ones but still more jobs.

I’m sure President Obama will have another well thought-out program just ready to go, to undo the damage from his last one(s).

By: DDFD at Defensive-Entrepreneurship.com

DDFD at Defensive-Entrepreneurship.com — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:26:28 +0000

I’m with #1 Marsha.

As we sat in my car, I had a frugally challenged business associate tell me I should Cash for Clunkers my car– I chuckled and said this car gets 35 MPH– Are you out of your mind?

Silence . . .

(That same associate recently admitted the $1,200/mth car payment he has on ONE car was a big mistake! No typos– $1,200– one car)

By: David@DINKS Finance

David@DINKS Finance — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:16:12 +0000

I will be the first to admit I do not check every link I post on twitter. This is usually when I RT (re-tweet) people. For the most part I do check them, but I can see how a “bad” link could get by. Perhaps you just glanced at hte page and didn’t read it in-depth and see if it was false information or not.

By: Squeaky

Squeaky — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 15:10:31 +0000

That which you subsidize, you get more of.

As a nation, we’re committed to subsidizing debt and over-consumption.

In fact, we’re so committed to doing so that we’re willing to go into debt to do it. This puts it in the same category as foreign war and entitlement spending: something we’re just unwilling to give up or consider reducing.

This means it’s unrealistic to suspect that the deficit spending will continue to increase, and that the national debt will continue to grow. As with all other nations that have started down this path and not corrected it, we are very likely to spend our way not only into insolvency but into bankruptcy.

By: Cars4Charities

Cars4Charities — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:53:16 +0000

Cash for clunkers had a lot of “unintended consequences”. It took business away from auto repair shops, parts stores, used car dealers and car donation charities. Plus, it destroyed 700,000 cars that ran, many of them were in good condition!

By: Mrs. Accountability

Mrs. Accountability — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 05:51:32 +0000

What Joe said – that’s exactly what I was going to say. We might have temporarily stimulated the economy, but how will sales be in the next few months? And hopefully everyone who bought a car can afford to keep up with the payments. Sometimes people don’t realize their insurance is going to skyrocket now that they have a brand new vehicle. I also found it terrible that perfectly good cars were destroyed.

By: Joe

Joe — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 11:05:42 +0000

Cash for clunkers created a bottle neck.

Once it was announced, dealer sales dried up. Nobody wanted to buy until the details were confirmed. The problem is, the sales which should have been happening prior were stalled and the sales which should have been happening later were pushed forward.

The only way to truly gauge its success is to watch the future of car sales and reposessions. I would predict sales will dramatically decrease while repos will spike.