Buying a car in New Hampshire
Every figure below is sourced to New Hampshire’s own revenue or motor vehicle publications and dated. Estimates only.
Auto loan calculator
The real out-the-door number — including whether your state credits your trade-in against the sales tax.
Auto lease calculator
Money factor, residual, and the payment — taxed by your state's actual method, since some states tax a lease's full value upfront instead of each payment.
Loan payoff calculator
What paying extra actually saves you — in interest and in months — on a car loan, a personal loan, or anything else that amortizes.
0% APR vs. cash rebate
Which dealer offer actually costs less over the life of the loan, and the rate at which they tie.
Personal loan calculator
Payment, total interest, and the effective APR once an origination fee is deducted from what actually reaches your account.
Debt consolidation calculator
Whether one loan actually beats paying your existing debts off as they are — measured against the best you could do without consolidating.
Auto refinance calculator
Whether refinancing your car loan is worth it — including whether a lower payment is being bought with a longer term on a depreciating asset.
Lease vs. buy a car
The same car both ways over the same months, with the resale value credited to the buyer — the part most comparisons leave out.
New Hampshire at a glance
- State sales tax
- 0%
- Trade-in credit
- Not applicable
- New Hampshire charges no sales tax on a car, so there is nothing for a trade-in to reduce.
- Dealer doc fee
- Not confirmed
- We have not confirmed a cap for this state, so we do not claim one.
- Title and registration
- $42.00
- $42.00 registration.
New Hampshire taxes the car every year, not just at purchase
A recurring annual tax on the vehicle’s value applies here — assessed at 100% of value at a representative 1.8% rate. It never appears in a monthly payment and is easy to miss when comparing states.Models the RSA 261:153 MUNICIPAL PERMIT FEE, New Hampshire's recurring annual value-based vehicle tax. THE BASE IS ORIGINAL FACTORY LIST PRICE (MSRP when new), not current market value and not purchase price — hence a 100% assessment ratio, with all the depreciation expressed through the declining rate instead. The rate declines by model-year age, stated in the statute as mills per dollar: 18 mills (1.8%) current model year, then 15 (1.5%), 12 (1.2%), 9 (0.9%), 6 (0.6%), and 3 mills (0.3%) at 5 or more years. 1.8% is the current-model-year rate, right for a new purchase and materially overstating for anything older — implement the six-step schedule. Minimum $5. UNUSUAL SHAPE: the mill rates are fixed by state statute and uniform across New Hampshire towns, so 'local' here means locally COLLECTED rather than locally rate-set, making this figure exact rather than representative. Because it bottoms out at 0.3% of original list, New Hampshire is expensive for new cars and very cheap for old ones.
Local tax in New Hampshire
NEW HAMPSHIRE HAS NO GENERAL SALES TAX — none at state or local level, so a vehicle purchase incurs no tax at the point of sale whatsoever, recorded as a hard 0. What is charged instead is a two-part annual registration: a STATE fee based on gross weight under RSA 261:141 ($42 for 0-3,000 lb, $48 for 3,001-5,000 lb, $66 for 5,001-8,000 lb, $1.06 per hundred pounds above that), and a MUNICIPAL PERMIT FEE collected by the town or city clerk under RSA 261:153, which is value-based and by far the larger component for a newer vehicle — see annualVehiclePropertyTax. All New Hampshire vehicles begin registration at the clerk of the owner's residence, so both are paid together.