Car Shipping from Colorado to Arizona

• The tax nobody budgets for is annual, not one-time

  Arizona charges a vehicle license tax every year in place of the personal property tax many states levy, and it is worked from the car rather than a flat fee: the first year values the vehicle at 60 percent of the manufacturer's base retail price, and each following year takes 16.25 percent off that value. The rate runs about $2.80 per $100 of value in the first year and $2.89 after, with a $10 floor. On a recent, expensive car it is the largest line on the registration by far, and it returns every renewal, so it belongs in the arrival budget rather than as a surprise at the counter.

• Seven months is the line between visitor and resident

  Arizona requires registration once a car owned by a nonresident is primarily under the control of an Arizona resident for more than seven months. That is the test a snowbird's shipment turns on: a genuine winter visitor whose car stays in their own hands for the season does not have to register it, while a car left with family, or kept here past seven months, does. It is worth settling before you ship, because it decides whether the vehicle license tax above is a bill you owe at all.

• Phoenix and Tucson check the tailpipe before they will register the car

  In the Phoenix metro area (Area A) and the Tucson area (Area B), a car cannot be registered until it has passed an emissions inspection, and a vehicle shipped in from another state has to clear one before its first Arizona registration. Nobody can run that test until the car is physically here, so it sits on the arrival list with the paperwork, not the departure one. Outside those two metros the requirement does not apply, which is one more reason where you are landing matters as much as when.

Sources: Arizona Revised Statutes 28-5801: vehicle license tax; Arizona Revised Statutes 28-2153: registration requirement and the seven-month nonresident rule; Arizona Revised Statutes 49-542: emissions inspection required before registration; National Weather Service: dust storms and haboobs; Arizona MVD: New to Arizona. Rules change; check before you register.