I had a car that was sitting in a yard for 6-7 years without the fees for storage being paid to the DMV.
My question is - if I buy a different vehicle and show up at DMV to complete registry and taxes of this new vehicle, it is my assumption that I should be able to register the new vehicle without having to first clear the account of the old plate? That is something that the DMV would have to engage in externally, with me directly regarding the fees on an old junked car; and then with the Franchise tax Board, court/wages attachment? Anyone know if this assumption is correct? I know that the control of a car's file is done by the plate/VIN, but I'm wondering if they have any right to interfere with a driver's license holder conducting other business with the DMV whilst another plate account is delinquent?
How would big accts like Hertz or Avis ever process their paperwork if this risk was possible as a paperwork jam every day?
Old car should have zero impact on the registration of the new one. I sold at least a hundred personal cars and I have to imagine that at least one is still in my name after being sold out of state that the DMV never really took out of my name.
As of when I lived there (left in 2007), you can buy a new car no problem. The bummer is, that back registration stays with the old car. If you try to sell it, the new owner MUST pay those back registration fees in order to re-register the car. There are clever ways around it, but the only reliable way I found was to wait 10 years until they purge the old data.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
As of when I lived there (left in 2007), you can buy a new car no problem. The bummer is, that back registration stays with the old car. If you try to sell it, the new owner MUST pay those back registration fees in order to re-register the car. There are clever ways around it, but the only reliable way I found was to wait 10 years until they purge the old data.
Me being a Texan, I always thought about nabbing some of those California vehicles with back due fees for a low price and bring them back here to Texas. As long as you can lay an out of state title on the counter and it doesn't have a lien listed on it, they'll gladly register it in Texas and give you a license plate and clean Texas title.
My MG had been parked for years in CA and had a bunch of back fees. I got the title for $18 after proving it had been transported out of CA on a wheels-up transporter (no flat tow or dolly) and that its tires never touched hallowed CA pavement even when being loaded. I think there was a statement from a cop involved. But it was a DMV agent in Sacramento who gave me the procedure.
Then a couple of months later I got a parking ticket because the seller left it on the street overnight before it was picked up. I paid that without complaint as disputing it would have meant paying all those fees :)
Cousin_Eddie (Forum Supporter) said:
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
As of when I lived there (left in 2007), you can buy a new car no problem. The bummer is, that back registration stays with the old car. If you try to sell it, the new owner MUST pay those back registration fees in order to re-register the car. There are clever ways around it, but the only reliable way I found was to wait 10 years until they purge the old data.
Me being a Texan, I always thought about nabbing some of those California vehicles with back due fees for a low price and bring them back here to Texas. As long as you can lay an out of state title on the counter and it doesn't have a lien listed on it, they'll gladly register it in Texas and give you a license plate and clean Texas title.
Indeed. As of when I lived there, cars were also CHEAP. I had a rule that I wouldn't pay more than $1500 for a car out there, and with one exception (an E30 Cabrio... because Los Angeles) I had 9 classics that were all running, driving, and great for the road.
$1500: 73 Impala wagon, 62 Caddy SDV
$500: 74 Maverick 302
$1000: Yamaha R6
$1200: P30 Step Van
$ Traded for a laptop: 86 Honda CB750 cafe
$ Traded for the CB750: An aluminum car hauler.
I mean, it's hard to go wrong with someone who has the conundrum of back registration. They don't want to spend the money, and neither does the buyer, so it goes cheap. I did one with back registration and ended up titling it in NV to a friend and then he "sold" it back to me, but it was a headache.
CA does have an inop option, and I'm not sure why more people don't do it.
My brother got a couple cars out of LA that had years of back registry taxes outstanding. They're now registered as antiques in OH. I believe he used the loophole Keith mentioned - something about an affidavit saying vehicles were trailered out of the state.
Every car I have purchased from CA has arrived with no air filter. I don't get it.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
Best I can tell, it's an old west coast wives tale. The air out there is actually pretty clean aside from carcinogens, but it's not loaded with dust, just smog. It's the equivalent of flipping the air cleaner lid on an old carbed car to get more air without the smog police being able to say anything.
Not sure why ALL of yours have been that way. I thought that myth went the way of the dodo in 1985
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Per the guidelines for what constitutes "severe service" by the automakers, living within 50mi of industry or farmland raises the amount of dust in the air.
The only place I would think actually isn't dusty would be someplace like the PNW where it rains a lot.
Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:
CA does have an inop option, and I'm not sure why more people don't do it.
https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/vehicle-industry-registration-procedures-manual-2/collection-and-payment-of-fees-and-penalties/certificate-of-non-operation-cno-reg-102/
California continues to charge registration on car that are no longer used?
Can't you retire the plate and just take the car off the road?
I'm SO glad I no longer live there!
seeker589 said:
California continues to charge registration on car that are no longer used?
Can't you retire the plate and just take the car off the road?
I'm SO glad I no longer live there!
I think you can de-register a plate. I miss living there. People get so worked up about the smog laws and the earthquakes, but as I found out moving there from PA, Angeleans ask just as many dumb questions about the north, like "don't people die when it gets below freezing?" and "how do you deal with all those mountains?"
The DMV is remarkably full of red tape, but it's efficient and they have sensible laws that make legal loopholes for just about anything. Find a sympathetic ear behind the counter, and they'll do common sense things to make your life easy.
There are also a million ways to get around the performance aspects of the smog laws. There were guys in our Impala SS group making a smog-legal 500 hp from their LT1s. It just takes creative tuning, and it really helps to have a super-savvy tune on a separate ECM that you can plug in for the test. Some of the guys I knew (back when smog tests were every two years) would build a second engine that was hot as heck. When it came time to smog check, they took a weekend and swapped the stocker back in, tested, then swapped back out the next weekend.
I really actually appreciated the CA DMV after growing up in PA.
In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :
Thanks.
PENNDOT has gotten much easier to deal with in the last few years.
seeker589 said:
California continues to charge registration on car that are no longer used?
Can't you retire the plate and just take the car off the road?
I'm SO glad I no longer live there!
Colorado does as well, but doesn't have a non-op status like California does. If I wanted to register my old Land Rover again, it would be a very expensive date because I'd have to pay all the back fees from the last time it was registered.
The difference is that it's only if I want to bring it back. If I sell it, the back fees are waived. Which means that my wife would soon own a Land Rover :)
California does max out the fees owed, it doesn't just keep increasing. I believe the max penalty is at two years, 160% of the year you missed plus another $200 in fees. So 2 years and 10 years have the same fee. Many people don't realize that and dump cars, thinking they owe for each year missed.
seeker589 said:
California continues to charge registration on car that are no longer used?
CA has a "Planned Non-Operation" (PNO), it's a one-time $5 fee to mark the car as not being used anywhere that registration is required. The thing is that you have to be thinking ahead -- once the deadline for the registration fees has passed the state assumes that you've been daily driving an unregistered car and you can't file PNO until you pay enough to bring it up to date. A lot of the time cars go non-operational because they won't pass smog and most people don't seem to want to pay the registration fee when that happens either. And once the car is a year overdue on smog, the system really isn't set up to accept payment of fees in that condition so it becomes very difficult to actually give them the money.
My M3 is registered PNO because it's a caged race car.
