MASSENA -- St. Lawrence County Treasurer Kevin Felt says town officials were misinformed about how sales tax flows from an auto dealer to a municipality.

Town Council members on Wednesday night were discussing restricting what they referred to as “transient car dealerships.” That means out-of-area dealers setting up shop in Massena.

Massena officials were concerned that Rochester-based Vision Auto Group is making sales in the town but the taxes were going to their home county.

Felt says that isn’t the case.

“When someone buys a car at a dealership in NYS, the dealer collects the sales tax and passes it on to the state. On a quarterly basis, the dealer reports what county the customers were registering the vehicles in (where they live),” he wrote in a Thursday email.

“The state uses this information to know how much tax money needs to go to the respective counties. So, the sales tax ends up in the county where the customer lives, it doesn’t stay in Rochester.”

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