No More $1 Car Sales At The SAAQ. Mandatory Revenu Quebec Evaluations!

The Société de l'assurance automobile du Québec, or SAAQ, has changed their regulations concerning the payment of QST on the sale of vehicles. It will no longer agree to calculate provincial tax on vehicle sales of $1, even in the case where both the seller and the buyer agree that $1 was the transaction price. As of about a week ago, the minimum sale price of a vehicle for calculating the QST is now set at $500.

It Gets Worse

For certain vehicles between the ages of 9-25 years that are too old to appear in the SAAQ's evaluation book, you need to have this vehicle evaluated by Revenu Quebec in order for the SAAQ to calculate how much TVQ is owed in the event of a private sale.

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MontrealRacing member mathieulsutton posted what we would consider a horror story about the new rule. Here is a copy of his post on the forum but briefly he says he went to buy a $1,000 vehicle for parts because the Nissan Murano he had bought three weeks earlier blew its engine. The SAAQ sent him to a Revenu Quebec office downtown where he waited an hour and a half to be told his car was worth $4,000. He had to pay $400 in provincial sales taxes on this amount or he could contest and pay $150 to have it re-evaluated. At this point, he had to return to the SAAQ and finish the transaction.

It seems that the SAAQ and Revenu Quebec don’t understand that many vehicles this age are not in full working condition and are worth less than the “book” value. They expect a person to pay $150 to have an evaluation done on a vehicle worth $1,000 in order to avoid paying the full TVQ. Oh and prepare to waste half your day doing so...

Read the full article on MontrealRacing.com