[petesamprs]

I leased my car in NJ and was surprised when my CA's numbers differed every so slightly from the numbers I had calculated many times. I wanted to make sure he wasn't gaming me so I worked to back out his numbers, and figured why my NJ lease was different from NY and most other states.

It's all in the tax calculation. In most states, they simply multiply your monthly payment by your tax rate and get your after-tax payment. Simple enough. In NJ, however, they take the total tax that you would have paid if they had done the calculation like other states, and add it to the cap cost.

The result is a very slight difference in the bottom line (in NJ's favor), which you can see in the attached model and screenshot. Not exactly sure yet why there's a difference when the same total tax amount is used, but it's clearly in the arithmatic.

Would love to hear your thoughts. Do other states use this methodology?