If you have bought a used balloon and would like to share your experience, feel free to share it here. Just send me your story and I will post it. I will not however post anything meant to cast anyone you might have had a bad experience with in a bad light. If you have come here to air out dirty laundry you have come to the wrong place. This is a place where potential buyers can learn from your experiences so please send in good, thought provoking stories.
Possible problems with taxes - By: ANON
One thing that I have found, that may be specific to Colorado, but may be similar in other states is this.  In CO, they assess taxes on aircraft sales based upon new registrations with the FAA.  Whenever I register a new balloon, about six months later, I get a bill from my state dept. of revenue.  As they are looking at N number registrations, this is only triggered by registration of an envelope (as lower ends and components don’t have N numbers).  I can buy and sell all of the lower ends I want, and not be taxed.  But, register an envelope, even a dead envelope, and I get a tax bill.  They base the taxes on the sales price (and they won’t take a FAA bill of sale form as proof of sales price for some reason).  So, any time I buy a system, I treat the envelope as a separate transaction from the lower end.  With older systems, most of the value is in the lower end.  As such, I assign the majority of the sales price to the lower end, with a smaller value placed upon the envelope, thus reducing the tax liability. 

And, BTW, if I am unable to prove the purchase price with a separate bill of sale form from the FAA Bill of Sale, they will base the taxes upon the new price of the balloon…ouch!

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