The five big steps to cut the costs of owning a car

How much does it cost to own a car? Say, 57.5 cents a mile, or 59.2 cents a mile? At 15,000 miles a year, that's $8,880 — or $740 per month.

That's what the IRS and the American Automobile Association (AAA), respectively, think it costs for you to operate your daily driver. But there is an awful lot of guesstimating between those two numbers, including purchase price, fuel, maintenance, depreciation, and repairs. And if you spend your career in the car business like me, you may find that there are an ocean of lobbyists and paid-for special interest hacks who pare down that cost even further for a chosen few.

Thanks to the inequities of our modern tax policy, your ownership costs can vary by a wide margin based on where you live, the type of car you buy, and what you do for a living.  When I left northern New Jersey and moved to the quietude of western Georgia, I soon found out my insurance premiums would be cut in half; a study earlier this year found that the same driver charged $560 for a year's coverage in Buffalo by one company could get hit with a $4,607 tab for the same policy in Minneapolis. (Even in Buffalo, the swing among insurers was $1,500).

Car dealers and other businesses that purchase or operate a large number of vehicles usually have fleet insurance which is typically lower on a per-vehicle basis. A car dealer in Georgia with 100 vehicles and a clean record typically pays less than what a middle-aged guy like me shelled out back in Jersey.

Road warriors and executives also get the luxury of expensing some or nearly all of their car costs as well. The IRS allows you to deduct your expenses or on a per-mile basis if you own a business. Also, employers often times will foot part to all of the bill based on the type of work you do. If you have the added fortune of living in one of these 23 states, Uncle Sam and his state government siblings will help you buy a new electric car with subsidies ranging from $8,500 and $12,500.

The mechanics of subsidization are so finely tuned in Congress these days that even the right gas guzzler could have been completely expensed out in 2014, thanks to the handy work of both political parties. And while the tax deduction rate for businesses gets adusted upward almost every year, that same per-mile rate for charity or medical work does not.

If you are an employee who commutes back in forth, you pretty much pay for it all and then some. Young families, middle-aged parents and the more experienced among us may get thrown a bone every now and then. The good news, if there is any, is that the direct costs we pay can be hacked down to less than half of the IRS and AAA averages. For most of us unsubsidized car owners the largest expense we can manage is...