jrice
Nov 29, 2003, 10:05 PM
Post #7 of 15
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Re: [Rolly] Problems with Vehicle Permit and your advice on driving!
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My experience:
I had a car I was paying off, still technically owned by my credit union. On the first trip in, the folks at the border accepted a fax. I never needed a notarized letter. It would still be good to have one, of course.
Having an American plated car has some advantages: cheaper taxes, for example. But there are also problems.
If you ever go through Mexico City, you are subject to "Hoy No Circula," even if you have a brand new California-certified hybrid.
More seriously, what happens if your car is stolen?
Very, very few people in Mexico know. We have an attorney who is learning now on my nickle. I dedicated a full week to it, got 10 percent of the way and gave up.
-- If you had the importation documents in the car, you have to get certified replacement letter from the border post where you entered (ALWAYS keep a copy of those documents elsewhere). Think about the delays that involves.
-- You must make a report at the notario publico and get --- what? three? four? certified copies of it. nobody is quite sure. To certify a document, at least in Mexico City, you have to go to the municipal or city treasurer's office and stand in line for a few hours to pay about $1 a copy for the notarization.
-- Did you keep your pink slip or ownership document outside the stolen vehicle? God help you if you did not. I did, happily.
-- Once the insurance company pays you off (and mine, Atlas, did so in an honorable fashion), you must pay a tax on the car that was stolen from you.
-- The tax, based on the intriguing concept that by having your car stolen, you imported a vehicle, is paid to the Economy Secretariat. Roughly one in 10,000 employees of said secretariat have even a vague idea of what procedures might be followed. The tax was roughly 40 percent of the reimbursement I got from the insuror.
-- Unless you pay said fee and get various documents associated thereto, you will never again in your life be legally able to bring a car into Mexico, even for a day. Many of those documents mean standing in line at Tesoreria to pay a tiny fee for certification.
-- Now. You're done with Mexico. And your state back home is demanding documents from the insuror (which do not match those to which the folks back home are accustomted), the crime report (certified) and a tax fee (yes, they may tax you too)
There is a very, very, very good chance that it will cost me more to deal with all that than I got from the insurance company for my car.
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