• There has been a recent cluster of spammers accessing BARFer accounts and posting spam. To safeguard your account, please consider changing your password. It would be even better to take the additional step of enabling 2 Factor Authentication (2FA) on your BARF account. Read more here.

DMV fees issue

senpai71

senpai71

Professional troublemaker
Joined
Feb 23, 2016
Location
San Francisco
Moto(s)
2015 Kawasaki Versys 1000LT, 2000 Triumph Sprint ST, 2008 BMW K1200GT
Name
Rory
So I recently bought a new (to me) bike from a lady in Brentwood - a 2008 BMW K1200GT.

The bike had a personalized Breast Cancer Awareness plate, which the seller said I could keep. The bike was on PNO status for 2 or 3 years, and I have the most recent registration showing that.

When I tried to register it, there was a huge mess that took weeks to organize, because apparently the BCA plate is hers and should have remained with her, but she doesn't want it. So there was a lot of back and forth about that and about getting the title transferred properly etc.

In any event, I got an initial transfer/registration fee request from the DMV of $472! Which I paid, and the bike was transferred to me, and I got a new plate. So all is good now.

But then I decided to ask about that fee - it sounds pretty damned high to me. And no-one at the DMV is able to give me any breakdown of what that fee consists of - when I went in last month to get a new driver's license (whole other story) and I asked the woman at the desk about it, she looked in the system and said "The fee was $472 and it shows that you paid it".

Should I be surprised? I don't normally bitch about the DMV (my personal experiences with their staff have been great), but I'm really just surprised that there was never any sort of breakdown of what the fee consisted of...
 

Attachments

  • 2024-08-17_13-39-11.png
    2024-08-17_13-39-11.png
    116 KB · Views: 14
DMV charges sales tax on the vehicle's selling price. If you listed a price, you would be dunned for about 8 precent of the selling price, plus transfer, plus a year license if you registered it and the license was due. Not near as bad as having to pay back registration that can run into thousands. Not surprised no one at Dmv could put any light on it. DMV, more fun than a day at the dentist!
 
BillSmith said:
Do you have AAA tow or insurance? If so, ask them to give you a better accounting.
Click to expand...
Actually I do - I'll check with them - thanks for the reminder. In my case I couldn't license the bike with AAA because of the whole personalized license plate thing, but I guess they can maybe get the details anyway...
 
Sounds like a registration fee. New plate+new registration=fee
 
senpai71 said:
Actually I do - I'll check with them - thanks for the reminder. In my case I couldn't license the bike with AAA because of the whole personalized license plate thing, but I guess they can maybe get the details anyway...
Click to expand...
They could've issued you a new plate, though. Common thing that people don't realize, personalized plates of any kind belong to the owner, not the vehicle. They're not supposed to transfer with the vehicle/motorcycle automatically if it's sold. A separate document must be completed to do that.
 
bobl said:
DMV charges sales tax on the vehicle's selling price. If you listed a price, you would be dunned for about 8 precent of the selling price, plus transfer, plus a year license if you registered it and the license was due. Not near as bad as having to pay back registration that can run into thousands. Not surprised no one at Dmv could put any light on it. DMV, more fun than a day at the dentist!
Click to expand...
Yeah, but this feels like a lot. I got the bike in March and it's up for renewal next month (but was on PNO status, so they should only charge me for 6 months of registration, right?). Plus 8% of $3500 (the official sale price ;)) which is only $280. Is transfer fee really that much?

Yeah, thank god there's no back-registration fees.... That's enough to make me walk away.

I dunno - it's actually less the $$$ than the lack of transparency. Although the $$$ stings, especially since I have to re-register it in September anyway.
 
I have bought a moto with a vanity plate and DMV gave me the option of keeping the vanity plate for an extra fee or get another plate. I got another and that sounds like what the OP did. Last new vehicle registration I did the DMV fees were listed via the calculator on the DMV site. Not sure if you can do that after the fact, but possibly if you create a hypothetical purchase with all the numbers from your purchase.
Anyway, it sounds like sales tax was included with all the other random, useless fees. If you bought it for an agreed upon $100 (on paper, at least), DMV may have calculated a reasonable value and taxed you based on that. I've heard of that being threatened, but never heard of it being enforced.
 
I think DMV charges the full year registration - that was my experience when bringing a PNO into operation just a few month prior to renewal.
 
senpai71 said:
Yeah, but this feels like a lot. I got the bike in March and it's up for renewal next month (but was on PNO status, so they should only charge me for 6 months of registration, right?). Plus 8% of $3500 (the official sale price ;)) which is only $280. Is transfer fee really that much?

Yeah, thank god there's no back-registration fees.... That's enough to make me walk away.

I dunno - it's actually less the $$$ than the lack of transparency. Although the $$$ stings, especially since I have to re-register it in September anyway.
Click to expand...

They will charge for the full year, (and if you are within 30 days they will charge for NEXT year too) only some commercial vehicles have an option to pay for months used I heard.

So $280 + $160 = $440 plus minus some transfer fee BS. you are in the ball park.
 
Kornholio said:
They could've issued you a new plate, though. Common thing that people don't realize, personalized plates of any kind belong to the owner, not the vehicle. They're not supposed to transfer with the vehicle/motorcycle automatically if it's sold. A separate document must be completed to do that.
Click to expand...
No, they still "belong" to DMV/State of California- and any LEO can impound the plates.
 
NorCalBusa said:
No, they still "belong" to DMV/State of California- and any LEO can impound the plates.
Click to expand...
I've got four sets here with me in Tennessee. Not a peep from the state since we moved away and filed releases for all of the vehicles that had them installed on them. Please feel free to come take them away. :laughing
 
Kornholio said:
I've got four sets here with me in Tennessee. Not a peep from the state since we moved away and filed releases for all of the vehicles that had them installed on them. Please feel free to come take them away. :laughing
Click to expand...
You changed your premise; that's not what you said in your post I replied too.
 
NorCalBusa said:
You changed your premise; that's not what you said in your post I replied too.
Click to expand...
So are you suggesting that as long as one doesn't register the vehicle anymore because they don't own it, they no longer have to pay the annual fee to "maintain" the plate in the system and the personalized plates are basically just theres then anyway, right? Assuming so, that's pretty much exactly what I said previously...the plate belongs to the owner and can be ran on any appropriate vehicle as long as they pay the annual fees for it. However, once they sell the vehicle or otherwise remove their legal association with the vehicle, they can remove the plate and keep it. I've literally never heard of the state demanding them to be returned for non-payment of the annual plate fee. It's not like the serial can be relinquished since the state will never allow them to be issued to anyone else anyway so again, the plates belong to the owner. I've also yet to see anything codified that refutes that. But if you have such material, for my own information, I'd like to see it.

Obviously the state isn't concerned about the annual fees for the plate since they're certainly not billing me for them. Why else would someone be charged an annual fee for the plate in addition to their registration fees if keeping the plate itself wasn't considered contingent on payment of those fees? Or is it just another way to get more money out of people? Regardless, I couldn't care less since I left the state with all of them, filed my change of address paperwork and washed my hands of it. I know CVC 4302 specifies returning of the plates to the issuing authority, but that appears to specifically refer to vehicles coming into the California DMV system, not leaving it. At the end of the day, I don't think the state cares that I still have the plates and if that's the case, doing the same thing in California also seems completely plausible.
 
So at this point my only concern is that I have the seller's personalized plate and I hope she's not unknowingly paying a fee to keep it up-to-date...
 
senpai71 said:
So at this point my only concern is that I have the seller's personalized plate and I hope she's not unknowingly paying a fee to keep it up-to-date...
Click to expand...
This should cover it:
www.dmv.ca.gov

21.200 Personalized License Plates Retention (VC §5109) - California DMV

A personalized license plate owner may remove and retain his/her license plates without reassigning them to another vehicle provided the license plate retention fee is paid each year (VC §5106(b)). Retentions—The procedures below be must followed:
www.dmv.ca.gov www.dmv.ca.gov
 
Tax?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top