Missouri has a personal property tax that mainly applies to vehicles. Here’s how it works.
What does Missouri’s personal property tax apply to?
Taxable personal property includes the following:
Motor vehicles
Trailers
Mobile homes
Watercraft
Boat motors
Aircraft
Livestock
Farm machinery and equipment
Agricultural crops
Any other personal property not exempted by law
Missouri also has a real estate property tax.
How does Missouri personal property tax work?
In Missouri, you generally need to pay tax on all personal property owned on January 1st.
You have to file a declaration form listing all of your tangible personal property by April 1st. You’ll then receive a tax bill that is due by December 31st.
What is the Missouri personal property tax rate?
The personal property tax rate depends on where you live. Each county and city can set its own tax rate. There are also special taxing districts such as school districts and fire districts.
The total personal property taxes usually work out to between $5 to $10 per $100 in assessed value. The good news is that the way Missouri calculates assessed value means that it’s only a fraction of an item’s full value.
The assessed value is a percentage of the market value:
Most property, including motor vehicles: 33 1/3%
Mobile homes used as dwellings: 19%
Grain and agricultural crops: 0.05%
Livestock and poultry: 12%
Farm machinery: 5%
Historic motor vehicles: 5%
Certain aircraft: 5%
Certain business tools and equipment: Varies
What is the personal property tax on a car or truck?
The assessed value is your car’s book value times its assessed value. You then multiply the assessed value times your local tax rate.
For example, if you have a $30,000 car, multiply by 33 1/3% to get a $10,000 assessed value. If your local tax rate is 7.5%, you’ll pay $750 in personal property taxes on your car.
The average effective tax rate in Missouri works out to about 2.5% of your car’s book value before adjusting for assessed value.
What happens if you don’t pay your personal property taxes?
If you don’t declare taxable personal property or return your declaration form to the county assessor after April 1st, there is usually a 10% penalty for late filing.
If you don’t pay your property tax bill by December 31st, additional penalties and interest apply.
You also won’t be able to get a property tax receipt which you need to register your car.
Can you deduct Missouri personal property taxes?
You can usually deduct personal property taxes based on value on your federal income tax return. They would fall under the State And Local Tax (SALT) deduction under itemized deductions.
Some tax bills have fixed fees for sewer, water, or other services. Fixed fees are generally not deductible.
Taxation pays for the things you want the general population to have such as paved roads instead of dirt roads, schools instead of ignorance (yes I know the US schools are greatly flawed but it’s better than some countries have), services for the public such as programs for health, food, shelter etc., law enforcement for the general public and courts to handle the criminals who break laws, protection by the military including the right to say that taxation is theft without fear of retribution, etc. I don’t like paying taxes either but better that than the alternative of not having what taxation gives us.
Taxation is theft.
The air you breathe is theft