1. Canada will no longer put plates - renew stickers on a Canadian vehicle that does not have Canadian Insurance ( this is new since Jim renewed his stickers last April without a hitch so luckily did it for a two year sticker.
2. Canadian Insurance companies will not insure a vehicle if it is out of Canada for more than six months so of course we have Texas All State insurance.
3. All State Ins could give us Canadian Insurance up until they read the fine print and they could only do it for a non resident of Canada for 1 month if we were travelling. I am a resident of Canada for this but a resident of Texas for Taxes... tres complicated so no insurance
4. Go to licence bureau to get Texas plates and they ask if you imported the car when you crossed the border at the customs office and of course we didn't.
5. Go to the Customs office at the Airport and import the two vehicles... may as well do both we figured if it was this complicated. It was very easy there... fill out a form, show them our passports and our fancy TN Visas and they stamped the form and we were good to go... no charge After that they sent us to the Tax Office to transfer Title to a US Title... Title Ownership - same thing
6. Go to the Tax office and they ask if we have a whole bunch of other info and inspections which we didn't... get a safety inspection, get a Police Inspection..proof we own it to start with, get purchase price of vehicle with tax that we paid in US dollars, if document in Cdn need to get an affidavit of the exchange rate when we bought them to prove that we paid tax or else we would have to pay Texas tax. So off we go to get all of these steps done.
7. Switched vehicles a couple of days and Jim got the safety checks done at a Mr Lube...
8. Police Checks are only done on Wednesdays with an apt back at the first place that we went - the license bureau. Went there with both vehicles but my GPS sent me a weird way so I got pulled over by the Police going to a police check because I was speeding in a School Zone... I had no idea where I was and still do not know where the school was. He was very nice and let me off with a written warning and directed me a different way to get there... Ontario plates got me out of a ticket I guess since it validated that I didn't know where I was.. there were two motor cycles there so I am thinking a lot of people speed there. The school zone where we live has flashing yellow lights when in effect. I said that and he said that the city can't afford the lights on all of them so you have to look for them... told Jim so now he knows too. During school times we are usually on the freeways and only see the one in our area that is well marked... oh well I digress. Got to the licence bureau and got the inspections done
9. Affidavits for exchange rates was an issue. Went to Wells Fargo since we have our mortgage with them so figured it would be easy peasy. An hour later they finally said that they could not give in writing what the rate was back in 2010 when I bought the EOS. They could verbally tell me but they would not do an Affidavit. I could look up on the internet like them but that wasn't good enough. I then called RBC Georgia - US version of Royal Bank... we have accounts in both to transfer back and forth. They said that they couldn't do it either but they said that their site kept directing them to the Bank of Canada so try them. I then called the Bank of Canada who gave me their email address and they would be happy to do it for me when I put the request in writing to them. Within 1 working day I had it attached to an email from them and then a week later the affidavits came snail mail for us to bring back to the tax off.
10. We were ready... had everything so off to the tax office...... you know its not going to be that easy right.... get our number and sit and wait. Finally get up to the booth....go to do the truck first. Jim gives his ID.... for some reason Jim has Jim on his passport and James on his drivers license and birth certificate... How he EVER got a passport without his real name on it in this day and age, I'll never know... this means his visa to be here is in the wrong name as well.... Finally convinced them to take it and then the guy says why did we give the affidavits etc. for the tax amount. We repeated what his co-worker had told us the last time we were there and he went to the other person and they agreed that that was wrong. They will accept tax paid from another state but not from another country... if it is from another state then it is still US so no exchange rate so why would they even have told us.... SOOO we now had to pay Texas Tax on the present value of our vehicles. Mine was still over 400 US tax but we had to pay it so we did. Jim's truck is new and still has Ont plates good for another year so we are waiting on it ... next year maybe Ont will give us another sticker on his... or it will be devalued a lot more so tax won't be so much....or we will drive it back to Ontario and sell it there and buy a new one down here where they are cheaper any way.
While Jim was looking into the document where he bought his truck which he couldn't find the paper work so had to call the dealership in Canada 4 times before they would send him a copy of it... he looked it over and saw that his truck was built in Texas... google the Toyota plants in Texas and which vehicles came out of which one.... and we think that his truck was built about 5 miles from our house... we bike past the plant on our bike rides. It was built there shipped to Canada and we drove it back down next to where it was built...strange.
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| EOS is a Texan |
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| Jim/James changing the plates |
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| Got rid of the red and went Black. When the Police stopped me He asked a lot of questions since I do not look like my ID at all. My Drivers Licence was taken with the fuzz that came right after I was bald so you can hardly see any hair at all |
