Quote:
Originally Posted by JSH
If the Federal Tax Credit was a point-of-sale rebate that would make sense. The money would come directly off the sales price and the monthly payment would be lower. Most people don't have the money to pay or finance an extra $7500 up front with the hope of getting it back from the government up to a year later. Could your average buyer even get approved for the loan?
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The Volt has an MSRP of $33,500, which is around the average vehicle sale price.
There's other tricks such as converting IRA contributions to Roth IRA to artificially boost tax liability and get the full $7,500. How many people have convertible IRAs though, and of those, who are savvy enough to know to do that?
I read somewhere that a single person making $60k generally has at least $7,500 in federal tax liability.
I'd imagine most people purchasing a brand new Prius Prime are at least in that income category.
Anyhow, I agree that the funds should be immediate so it would be less regressive. Besides all that, I'm against government picking technology winners and losers via subsidy. They should approach environmental problems from a higher level and let the market achieve determine how to achieve the objectives.