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As someone who just completed the entire ordering process during the CPO fire sale, within your profile, you can simply list who the car will be registered under and you can just note your family's name. Everything even signing the PO Agreement, financing, down payment is all electronic. Tesla will not have the capability to double check if the deposit is in the same name.... Shoot, I accidentally ordered 4 cars and that didn't raise any red flags.
 
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I have a Model 3 on reservation in my name but it is going to my girlfriend. It was suggested by my local Tesla salesperson at Santa Barbara store to log into "My Tesla" on tesla.com and add her name as a second contact. Try it, you'll see there is a link for a second contact. You could do this with anyone you trust. If that doesn't work, I'll simply buy it and give it to her. I have a second one coming as well I am giving to my son. In California, one can give a car to a family member or relative at no cost and pay no transfer tax. In other words a zero money exchanged, so no sales tax transfer.
 
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I have a Model 3 on reservation in my name but it is going to my girlfriend. It was suggested by my local Tesla salesperson at Santa Barbara store to log into "My Tesla" on tesla.com and add her name as a second contact. Try it, you'll see there is a link for a second contact. You could do this with anyone you trust. If that doesn't work, I'll simply buy it and give it to her. I have a second one coming as well I am giving to my son. In California, one can give a car to a family member or relative at no cost and pay no transfer tax. In other words a zero money exchanged, so no sales tax transfer.
The IRS should require a form filled out to track your taxes on anything in excess of the max yearly gift (whatever that amount is this year). Can't just give people cars in excess of that amount without the govt. tracking it.
 
You wouldn't be considered a second owner if you were on the original account with another person & then that person was removed.

Sorry for misunderstanding - I think a few things are being proposed in this thread. And I was interpreting that the conversation was leaning towards just buying the car and then transferring it.

Bonnie, as another person suggested, isn't your proposal of adding another owner, and then removing yourself, one of the "loopholes" that tesla doesn't want to happen?

And, as others have said, it's not just who tesla thinks owns the car. But it's also who's name(s) are on the pink slip (aka who the DMV thinks owns the car). If tesla allowed you to do the above, presumably both your names would be on the pink slip. I don't know if it's easy/hard to get a name taken off of that.

And finally, if you're interested in totally following the law, there are various gift giving limits in play - and those are of course, confusing as well. Don't quote me, but it's something to the effect that you can give as many people as you want, up to $12.5k *each*, per year tax free (yes I think it's as crazy as it sounds). But if you give any one person more than that in one year, it starts to eat from your lifetime gift giving limit which is in the millions (I think $5M). Anyway, simply gifting a $35k car is not totally free of implications.
 
Sorry for misunderstanding - I think a few things are being proposed in this thread. And I was interpreting that the conversation was leaning towards just buying the car and then transferring it.

Bonnie, as another person suggested, isn't your proposal of adding another owner, and then removing yourself, one of the "loopholes" that tesla doesn't want to happen?

And, as others have said, it's not just who tesla thinks owns the car. But it's also who's name(s) are on the pink slip (aka who the DMV thinks owns the car). If tesla allowed you to do the above, presumably both your names would be on the pink slip. I don't know if it's easy/hard to get a name taken off of that.

And finally, if you're interested in totally following the law, there are various gift giving limits in play - and those are of course, confusing as well. Don't quote me, but it's something to the effect that you can give as many people as you want, up to $12.5k *each*, per year tax free (yes I think it's as crazy as it sounds). But if you give any one person more than that in one year, it starts to eat from your lifetime gift giving limit which is in the millions (I think $5M). Anyway, simply gifting a $35k car is not totally free of implications.

I'm not going to stress about it. I have a close family member taking my reservation. Their name will be on the pink slip & registration. As far as your remark of 'if you're interested in totally following the law', it's only a gift if I paid for it. If I were playing games on this (ie, selling a reservation & asking Tesla to condone it), I'd fully expect to have problems. But I'm not.

Moving on.
 
My final thought for this thread is just that IMO, this seems like a gray area. Not saying the stuff suggested in this thread won't "work". Just that folks shouldn't use this as a blueprint for transferring their reservation to anybody they choose.

I do think the DMV title part could be a wrinkle. Because if person A holds a model 3 reservation, then adds person B to the reservation, then removes person A from Tesla's reservation...and then the car gets paid for and registered with only person B on the title...well then that just seems like a hard to police way to shift a reservation to someone else. Where would tesla draw the line? Would they only allow transfers to people with the same last name? That wouldn't work! Many spouses have different last names. So could tesla only allow this to close family members that are "close enough"?

It *seems* to me the best you can hope for is to roll off the lot with a pink slip with both person A and person B on it. And for close family members, maybe that's totally fine!

But, once you start taking people's names off pink slips after the fact...that does constitute a "change in ownership" (adding or deleting the name of an owner is clearly included on the California DMV website, and the only realistic option in this example would be to declare the transfer as a gift). And I'm super curious about this...but my hunch, is that going from persons A and B each owning 50% of the vehicle, to person B being the sole owner by way of a gift, does have some sort of tax implication if you're following the letter of the law - regardless of whether the entire purchase cost came out of person B's bank account.

It's entirely possible (probable even!) that you could just do the above, and never declare anything, and nobody would ever bother you. I just want to put it out there so folks considering doing this can fully think it through.
 
Ok one last thing...(this got me curious)

The IRS $7500 federal tax credit law says this:
"The vehicles must be acquired for use or lease and not for resale. Additionally, the original use of the vehicle must commence with the taxpayer and the vehicle must be used predominantly in the United States. For purposes of the 30D credit, a vehicle is not considered acquired prior to the time when title to the vehicle passes to the taxpayer under state law."

I interpret that to mean:
-only the original owner can claim the credit
-"original owner" is defined as the owner according to state law (i.e. California DMV pink slip)

Since removing an owner from a pink slip is essentially a change in ownership (equal to resale under state law), it would seem to me that the letter of the law says person B (from the example in my previous posts) would technically not be eligible for the tax credit.

Again...maybe the IRS wouldn't bug you. Maybe if you're close family members, you just wait till after the rebate is paid before you dork with the ownership...but if it were me, I wouldn't just fumble my way through this without knowing exactly the implications of all the steps.
 
They didn't transfer their reservations, they both had one, Ira simply let Elon configure and order first. Same as when the configurator opens and people decide to wait for options, people behind them will move up.
Ok, so let's say my cousin Joey puts down a reservation today (7/11/2017). Can I swap my reservation with his? Let's say "cousin" is just a term of endearment, and that he's really not blood related at all? Is the Elon/Ira situation really that much different?
 
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As someone who just completed the entire ordering process during the CPO fire sale, within your profile, you can simply list who the car will be registered under and you can just note your family's name. Everything even signing the PO Agreement, financing, down payment is all electronic. Tesla will not have the capability to double check if the deposit is in the same name.... Shoot, I accidentally ordered 4 cars and that didn't raise any red flags.

So this is interesting.

Anyone here have recent X reservation --- can you verify ability to list the car registration and specifics and not autofilled in with the original reservation name and address?

It would be interesting to see.

We have 2 sets of reservations -- 2 from in-store and 2 online at reveal time --- we want to gift two of them to our office mates and other to godfather of our kid since we don't need 4.

It'll be a lot easier if they simply log into the second account to complete the entire transaction.
 
Ok, so let's say my cousin Joey puts down a reservation today (7/11/2017). Can I swap my reservation with his? Let's say "cousin" is just a term of endearment, and that he's really not blood related at all? Is the Elon/Ira situation really that much different?
Yes, it is different. If Ira was the first one, then Elon was probably second. Ira simply stepped aside to let the next person configure. You could do the same but you'd have to let everyone else between the two of you go ahead as well.
 
I don't think so: Electric-vehicle tax credit: Does it apply to the owner, co-owne... - TurboTax Support
as long as one one claim is made, should be fine.

I read that turbotax answer (which may be correct, but is actually just an opinion), and I didn't really get the impression even that that writer was saying a second owner can take the credit, as long as only one credit per vehicle is taken.

I think what the writer was saying, was that the actual person who drives the car home from the lot, doesn't have to be the one who takes the credit - in cases where there are multiple owners on the title.

I think the author was also saying, you probably can't split the tax credit across multiple returns.

And if I understand that author correctly, then I agree with them.