Buying a car in Arizona
Every figure below is sourced to Arizona’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.
Arizona at a glance
- State sales tax
- 5.6%
- Local tax is added on top in most states — treat this as a floor.
- Trade-in credit
- Reduces your tax
- You are taxed on the price less your trade-in allowance.
- Dealer doc fee
- Not confirmed
- We have not confirmed a cap for this state, so we do not claim one.
- Title and registration
- $12.00
- $4.00 title + $8.00 registration.
Arizona taxes the car every year, not just at purchase
A recurring annual tax on the vehicle’s value applies here — assessed at 60% of value at a representative 2.8% rate. It never appears in a monthly payment and is easy to miss when comparing states.Arizona's Vehicle License Tax, collected annually with registration in place of a conventional local property tax. It genuinely has the ratio-times-rate shape, with two caveats. (1) The rate is set STATEWIDE by statute rather than by a locality, so the 'typicalLocalRatePct' label is a schema artifact: $2.80 per $100 of assessed value for NEW vehicles, $2.89 for USED. (2) These are YEAR-ONE figures. The 60% ratio is reduced by 16.25% for each year since the vehicle was first registered in Arizona, so applying 60% x 2.80% flat in later years overstates the tax substantially. ADOT's own example: a $30,000 vehicle owes $504 in year one, $435.67 in year two, $364.87 in year three.
Local tax in Arizona
Arizona's tax is a transaction privilege tax on the retail classification, imposed on the seller rather than the buyer. The state retail rate is 5.6%; counties and cities levy their own additional TPT on top, published in ADOR's rate tables. The state use tax rate is also 5.6%.