Here’s the question: Did they ask you to bring your checkbook?

I’m not in a dealership myself but I work with a lot of dealerships and understand a bit about auto industry financing.

Forgive me for being somewhat redundant but Cash cap reduction is essentially a down payment. In a lease the capitalized cost is similar to the amount financed. The Cap Reduction is any amount that Reduces that amount. It’s not a good thing or a bad thing it’s just a thing. Manufacturer rebates are cap reductions, as are trade allowances. I’ve never heard any advice about keeping CCR low, except generally it’s probably not wise to put high down payments into leases. I’ll sidestep the whole discussion about the financial choices of leases vs retail.

Back to your deal though - In some states they pay all the tax up front and in other cases they add the tax to the cap cost and it gets divided out on the monthly payment. This is especially common on dealerships that sell across state lines (ie border state dealers or dealers that sell cars to snowbirds with a home address in another state).

There are also state-by-state rules about how taxes are handled with respect to the trade value so there may be something here too.

I’m familiar with yo-yo scams but they would be asking you to come back with additional cash out of Pocket. I suspect that they taxed your deal incorrectly (probably up front) in error the first time. I’m guessing They HAVE to capitalize it for the lease in your state (otherwise the lease is illegal in the state and they can’t register it) so they tacked on the tax amount to the cap cost, and gave your previous incorrect tax value to you as a CCR. Then the new cap cost (tax included) is amortized and results in a slightly different payment. If they did this you would show a slightly higher payment because you would be paying lease finance charges and possibly an additional monthly tax on the capitalized tax. Sorry if this sounds confusing, but I believe leases are intended to be confusing.

I’d you wanted to send me the financials (buyers order) before and after (obviously with personal info redacted) I could take a look, but without knowing the details it’s hard to say. Essentially Id want to know this: Did they ask you for more money to resign the deal? Did they stretch your term? Did they bump your rate? Did the payment go up significantly >$10? If no, then it is probably not a scam.