SAN DIEGO — Escondido, San Marcos and Lemon Grove have become the first inland cities in San Diego County to raise their local sales tax rate a full cent higher than the county’s base rate of 7.75%.

Voters in those cities easily approved sales tax hikes last week. They join coastal cities Chula Vista, National City, Imperial Beach, Solana Beach and Del Mar at 8.75% — the highest rate in the county.

With ballots still being counted, voters appear to have rejected a countywide half-cent sales tax hike that would have increased the county’s base rate to 8.25% and the rate in all cities with full-cent local surcharges to 9.25%.

Voters also appear to have rejected a proposed full-cent increase in the city of San Diego, a proposed full-cent increase in Encinitas and a proposed half-cent increase in Santee, based on results posted Monday afternoon.

Those three cities were on track to continue to have the lowest sales tax rates in the county, at 7.75%. They are joined by Carlsbad, Poway and Coronado at that rate.

In the cities where increases got approved, those increase take effect April 1 of next year.

But the sales tax increase in Escondido — home to several car dealers in the Escondido Auto Park — shouldn’t send car shoppers flocking to other cities such as Carlsbad or Poway in the hopes of paying lower sales tax rates.

That’s because California handles sales tax on purchases of cars, boats and planes differently than purchases of other products.

When you buy a refrigerator, a bottle of wine or some other ordinary item subject to sales tax, you are charged the sales tax rate of the city where you make the purchase.

But when you buy a car, boat or plane, you are charged the sales tax rate that applies to the address where you register it.

So if you live in Poway and register your car there, you pay 7.75% sales tax on a car purchase — no matter where you buy the car in California.

Voters also approved extensions of some local sales tax surcharges last week.

Voters in La Mesa extended that city’s 75-cent local surcharge, leaving the rate there 8.5%. In addition, a full-cent surcharge was extended in Chula Vista, which has a rate of 8.75%, and half-cent surcharges were re-approved in El Cajon and Oceanside, which both have rates of 8.25%.

California doesn’t specifically limit how much cities can raise their local sales tax rate. But the combined total of all county, district and city sales tax surcharges can’t rise above 2 cents on the dollar.

Because San Diego County’s base rate of 7.75% includes a half-cent surcharge for transportation projects, that leaves local cities the leeway to impose a local tax of 1.5 cents.

But the 2-cent cap is not a hard cap. The state Legislature has granted local governments exemptions in several places, including Alameda, Los Angeles, Sonoma and Solano counties.

The highest sales tax rates in the state are in the Bay Area’s Alameda County, where the base rate is 10.25% and the rate is 10.75% in the cities of Albany, Hayward, Newark, San Leandro and Union City.

The base rate is 9.5% in Los Angeles County, and many cities there have rates of 10.25%.

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