Lease Calculator for New York

Hello my fellow New Yorkers! I went and created Lease Calculator that works specifically with our great state's wonky sales tax rules for car leases. I know this probably won't be useful to anyone yet for at least a month or two (at the earliest), but I wanted to share it now so people can start playing around with it, and maybe even find any errors I may have made.

The link is: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AiSAy22m8bFJdDJjaWxFMUkzY1Ftd1Z4V2Z1NEdUU0E" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

To use it, just save it to your own Google Doc account, or you should be able to download it as an Excel file.

I have it set with the figures that my dealer quoted me over the phone for a lease through the credit union NEFCU. For reference, I also included the most recent numbers for a lease through Nissan (which appear to be more expensive). Speaking of which -- does anyone know of any downsides to leasing through someone other than Nissan?

Please let me know if you discover anything that needs to be changed. I'll probably be updating it once I actually get into the dealership and see how accurate it was for me.

To anyone who has tried this spreadsheet, I have updated it a bit and fixed a few errors I found. I have a feeling the residual %'s listed are wrong, based on what I've seen online at http://www.ridewithg.com/index.php/2012/01/2012-nissan-lease-rates-january-2012/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;. They've slipped down from 45% on 36 months to 43% as the car has aged within the model year. Tier 0 money factor is apparently .00175, up (very) slightly from .00174 last month.

In NY, you must pay all sales tax on a lease up front at signing. If your dealer claims that they will "roll" the tax into your monthly payment, what they are actually doing is loaning you the money for the sales tax, paying it up front on your behalf, and then coming up with a new monthly payment figure, which in turn increases the amount of sales tax owed up front at signing. Basically, putting NOTHING down on a lease in NY isn't a great choice, as you're paying tax (and interest) on tax. See this publication from NYS for more information...