Interesting and somewhat related: Youtuber Cody Detwiler (whistlindiesel) was arrested last year and charged with multiple tax evasion felonies for using the Montana loophole to register his vehicles.
According to Detwiler, Tennessee did not bother to notify him in advance that he was in violation. Instead, they sent heavily armed men to his place of business, handcuffed him, and took him to jail. His bond was $20000.
Detwiler spoke out publicly on his Youtube channel about the arrest, claiming that he was targeted specifically because his celebrity status would bring attention to Tennessee's position on the loophole. Shortly afterward, Detwiler was arrested a second time at the airport while returning from a trip abroad, and charged with a separate Montana loophole violation.
Detwiler says that Tennessee authorities visited his accountant months before he was charged, asked her specific information about his vehicles being registered in Montana, and told her not to let Detwiler know about they were investigating him.
> According to Detwiler, Tennessee did not bother to notify him in advance that he was in violation. Instead, they sent heavily armed men to his place of business, handcuffed him, and took him to jail. His bond was $20000.
Why should white collar crime deserve a lighter touch? This wasn't a no-knock raid in the middle of the night.
Because they’re part of the gentry class white collar, but blue collar crime the police force as we know it today was created to take care of the EastEnders not the Gentry class and the police have been successful in carrying out their remit in that area of law enforcement since the 1840’s/1850’s…
The person in question was arrested and charged with tax evasion and filing a false sales tax return. What he is alleged to have done is illegal.
The state was under no obligation to alert him to the fact that they believed he had committed tax evasion and filing a false sales tax return before they arrested him and charged him with a crime.
What he seems to have expected was an opportunity to pay to settle a criminal charge before it landed him in cuffs. This I should be able to pay to make it go away attitude seems especially prevalent in American society today.
This Montana car registration scheme is, I believe, often referred to as "loophole" not because it's legal but because so many people have been able to get away with it without consequence that it is seen by many as relatively low-risk.
Setting up the LLC is not illegal. On its own, this is not tax evasion.
The tax evasion comes in when you fail to pay the use tax due and make false declarations or intentionally omit information when you make representations to the government (i.e. in tax filings).
The individual in question could have set up a Montana LLC, purchased a vehicle through it, paid the use tax due when he moved it to Tennessee and changed the registration within the 30 day limit.
Of course, there is no benefit of going out of your way to buy a car in Montana if you don't intend to drive it there, but the charges against this person relate to his failure to pay tax, not the mere fact that he set up an LLC.
If its just a monetary fine then there’s little reason to arrest somebody to immediately release them when you could’ve just told the accountant he needs to pay a fine or he’s going to be arrested.
Generally-speaking, this type of tax evasion is not treated the same as, say, making a mistake on a tax return that results in you owing a bunch of money to the state.
It's akin to intentionally defrauding the state.
A quick Google search indicates that willful tax evasion is a Class E felony in Tennessee, with a potential prison term of 1-6 years.
Sounds sensible but I don't think that's actually a law. If doing something via a business legally reduces your tax bill then it is, by definition, legal.
As mentioned in the article, the exception is intended for when the majority of the business is conducted in the other state. If in fact you don't do any business in the other state at all, then you are lying and evading taxes. The law is not about how you set things up on Day 1, it's about whether your ongoing behavior is actually consistent with the requirements of the law.
"Any one may so arrange his affairs that his taxes shall be as low as possible; he is not bound to choose that pattern which will best pay the Treasury; there is not even a patriotic duty to increase one's taxes."
Gregory v. Helvering, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1935.
Edit: So if it's a legal arrangement that reduces taxes, then yes, it's legal.
> This I should be able to pay to make it go away attitude seems especially prevalent in American society today.
It works for the billionaire class, why shouldn’t it work for everyone else?
This is what’s ultimately going to kill what’s happening in the US today: when people in power decide that the rule of law is just a suggestion, they’re going to find that there are people willing to use that against them in ways that they’re not going to like.
But make it illegal first. Make sure it's a "loophole" as opposed to what it currently appears to be: a specifically crafted loophole that over half the Fortune 500 can fit through.
> ...a specifically crafted loophole that over half the Fortune 500 can fit through.
There is no "loophole".
It is perfectly legitimate for a company to be incorporated in Delaware and to register as a foreign corporation in other states where it has a presence/does business. You can pick any random Fortune 500 company and look up its registrations in the states where it does business.
This is not remotely similar to setting up a shell LLC in Montana, purchasing a vehicle through it in Montana to avoid sales tax in another state, registering it in Montana and then physically moving it to another state without changing the registration and paying the use tax as required by law in that state.
The crime here is not about setting up a Montana LLC. Nothing about the Montana LLC made this car tax evasion scheme even arguably legal.
I feel like the law should differentiate a rich person doing this with many luxury cars versus me with one car who maybe in a few years needs to move across states.
For example, if I own a 2014 Nissan Versa and I register it in Colorado in January 2020 and then I need to move to Texas in August, I won't get Texas plates immediately when I get to Texas. I've "paid up" in Colorado for as long as my tags are good. I shouldn't have to get a Texas license plate until my existing one expires. However, I will eventually get Texas tags, just a few months too late.
Also I don't mind people going to Montana and buying luxury cars there if the cars actually stay in Montana. However, there should be scrutiny on these expensive toys more than regular cars we need to live because we don't have a decent transit story.
I feel like intent and magnitude should play a big role in legislation.
> It is perfectly legitimate for a company to be incorporated in Delaware and to register as a foreign corporation in other states where it has a presence/does business. You can pick any random Fortune 500 company and look up its registrations in the states where it does business.
It may be legal, but it's rather more questionable if it's legitimate: the latter is a value statement in casual language, even if legal jargon would be more precise.
If I do business with people in all states of the USA*, there should not be any particular state which attracts a majority of big (and everything bigger than "small") business registrations: other than network effects (e.g. everyone else does it so the corporate lawyers are all right there), anything pushing so many businesses to choose one specific state, be that for taxation or for a court system that presumes more in favour of businesses than elsewhere, this creates an uneven playing field for other states and who gets what powers of enforcement for business (/consumer) laws they pass.
Like, people here argue the EU is "anti-business": well, the American-registered factories (Tesla) and American-owned IT company offices (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.) are still here, and the shares are publicly traded so even us Europeans can own them, but they count as "American" because of where they (/their parent companies) are registered. Even Google Deep Mind (HQ: London) gets called "American" due to the ownership structure.
I don't have time to go into a long-winded explanation of why so many corporations are set up in Delaware (there's plenty of information online about this) but I want to address this point:
> this creates an uneven playing field for other states and who gets what powers of enforcement for business (/consumer) laws they pass.
Setting up your company in Delaware does not mean that you are exempt from the business and consumer protection laws in other states.
If you're a Delaware company and you violate consumer protection laws in California, violate environmental protection laws in Colorado, defraud investors in Maryland, etc., the relevant authorities/powers in those states will all be able to exercise jurisdiction over you.
Being incorporated in Delaware does not mean you have free reign to do whatever you want in any other state and have disputes over your actions adjudicated in Delaware.
Huh? There is nothing illegal about setting up a corporation in Delaware or South Dakota.
If you have a Delaware corporation doing business in, say, California, and you refuse to register as a foreign corporation in California and follow the laws applicable to businesses in California, that is a different matter.
The Delaware corporation is perfectly legal; the failing to follow California's laws when your company is doing business there isn't.
Over half the Fortune 500 is incorporated in Delaware. Countless private companies are incorporated in Delaware and other states, with their owners properly registering as foreign corporations and paying applicable taxes and fees in second states where they do business.
The person in question wasn't arrested for buying and registering a car in Montana. He was arrested for not paying the tax he owed on it under Tennessee law after he brought it into Tennessee. The law there states that sales or use tax is owed on a vehicle if the vehicle is primarily housed and operated in the state.
Under Tennessee law, you are also required to change an out-of-state vehicle's registration to Tennessee if it's brought into the state and operated there for more than 30 days.
So, in summary, you can buy a car in Montana and pay no sales tax and it's not a crime. It becomes a crime when you use the Montana purchase to evade paying taxes in another state where you actually use and house the car.
Just in case you’re not aware, people have problems with Delaware LLCs because:
A) They can be used relatively easily (compared to other states) as shell companies because you do not have to identify yourself publicly when minting the company.
B) The legal process corporations can choose to go through in Delaware are extremely advantageous to corporations (look up The Court of Chancery)
Are US companies, including Delaware LLCs, used as shells for dubious purposes? Yes. That the US is one of the better places to set up a shell company is a not-so-secret secret.
But it's not clear what use case you have in mind, and I think your comment deserves some qualification:
1. Even if disclosure of your name and personal details isn't required to set up a Delaware LLC, almost everyone is going to be identified anyway: through the registered agent, the EIN you obtain from the IRS, your bank. Sure, if you have a team of lawyers and layers of layers of shell companies across multiple jurisdictions, it's trivially easy to keep your ownership pretty effectively hidden but the minute you have any assets in or moving through the US, it's trivially easy for the authorities to figure out who you are once they have a reason to.
2. The legal "advantages" of Delaware basically aren't relevant to single-member/closely-held companies because you're not going to have any disputes with yourself over the corporate structure. If your Delaware entity is doing business in other states, you are exposed to the laws of those states as far as your business operations are concerned.
It’s not so much a problem anymore. Delaware is mainly used for consistency and ease of acquisition. It’s Western states like Nevada and Wyoming that are becoming more advantageous for owners, but this isn’t always a good thing if you intend to sell the company or seek funding.
What do you mean “shell companies”? Most Delaware corporations don’t hide their identities.
And yes, the legal process is advantageous in DE because the courts have a massive body of prior law. Decisions are made quickly. It doesn’t mean the courts routinely rule for corporations.
THe problem is what "doing business" means (and what it should mean) for internet companies.
If you're an American company selling your stuff to German users, are you doing business in Germany? What if you don't have a German translation of your site, don't accept Germany-specific payment methods and don't advertise in Germany-specific channels, but still ship there? What if your products are delivered electronically, and you don't apply any IP blocks? What if you IP block Germany, but don't block VPN use? What if you do block VPN use, but still process personal data of German citizens (even without giving them access to your systems)? What if you do everything in your power to stop German users from using your site, but the site is free and VPN detection isn't 100% reliable, so some users do slip through?
Just to be clear, there are no good answers here, and the law (and international law in particular) is wholly unprepared for the realities of the internet.
> What if you don't have a German translation of your site, don't accept Germany-specific payment methods and don't advertise in Germany-specific channels, but still ship there?
Shipping there demonstrates willingness, that is the sales contract (shipping to the customer address), advertising or localisation don't matter since those aren't a "contract" but the final sale with shipment is. It's quite clear-cut.
> What if you do everything in your power to stop German users from using your site, but the site is free and VPN detection isn't 100% reliable, so some users do slip through?
If you can demonstrate that you had active safeguards to not allow someone in Germany to use your product, and these users had to find workarounds to access it, you are protected.
There are good answers: if you willingly delivery a service or a product to a resident of a country you are subject to its laws.
The law is not as unprepared as you seem to think.
The law in most countries, including Germany, is very clear: if you're going to sell your products or services to individuals and businesses in those countries, you become subject to the laws applicable to that type of transaction in those countries.
If you don't want to be subject to German law, don't sell products or services to people in Germany.
Yep, the law is ruthless. However, for compliance reasons just checking the IP and the payment method is probably enough (definitely check that with a lawyer and a tax advisor; IANAL).
Why so complicated? Ask yourself how you find out if someone is living in country foo. By looking at the postal address, of course. If the shipping or billing address is in country foo, e.g. Germany, the shipment is subject to country foo's law. Just block potential customers from addresses in countries you don't want to deal with. It's really easy.
> stuff to German users, are you doing business in Germany
Yes, and the VAT must be paid. You'd need to have some EU member state registration to do so (and still pay the correct VAT-rate, it's different per country). If it's business-to-business it'd be somewhat different.
>but still ship there
The local folks will have to customs-clear it themselves, pay the import tax AND the VAT. It's doable but very consumer unfriendly and likely won't be doing much business at all.
With the regards to topic - the tax is still very much paid.
Idk, where I live companies need to be tied to real people, so Delaware LLCs sound as shady as it gets to me.
But I was also never a fan of using one problem to justify not going after another. We ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Someone who does not pay their taxes, be it a legal or illegal loophole, does not pay their fair share within the society they live in. It is not us people against the state, it is us people who are the state.
To me, "loophole" in a legal context means that the law is written in such a way that there is an omission (perhaps unintentional, though sometimes intentional) such that using that loophole is legal. So yes, using a loophole is -- by definition -- always legal.
If doing something isn't legal, then it's not a loophole. It's just something that someone thought they could get away with if the government didn't notice.
Sounds like this was never legal in Tennessee; calling it a "loophole" isn't correct.
This is a huge problem with our legal system. Either make the law simple and absolute or don't make it a law. Intent should play absolutely zero role. Otherwise, all you get is a corrupt system of lawfare that interprets the intentionally ambiguous law to suit those in power.
I used to think this way and then after I got more experience and wisdom I concluded attempting to make simple absolute laws is inflexible and unrealistic.
I hit with my car in the night a pedestrian who is spaced out on mescaline and has suicidal tendencies. Vs I hit with my car a neighbor whom I had and have long list of legal disputes and physical confrontations and death threats.
Both hits are the same, resulting damage/death same. Law differentiates on (proven or disproven) intent and resulting sentencing difference may be huge. Or at least should be. World and people are unfortunately anything but simple generic use cases.
Million other cases proving there are good reasons to take intent into account, even if surface for mistreatment is not small. Unjustice otherwise would be bigger IMHO.
>Either make the law simple and absolute or don't make it a law. I
Government doesn't just give up power like that. And they sure don't give it up over the kicking and screaming of the myriad of industries that benefit as middle men and over the kicking and screaming of the "there ought to be a law" class of useful idiots that exist for every exist of policy.
Except it was illegal, so it wasn't a loophole. It was something technically doable, not legally.
You can get married in multiple states - though some states may share, most don't share marriage registration. Nothing will stop you. But you're still breaking the law of bigamy.
The law (at least in California as described in the article) did not permit this behavior. If you didn't actually do the majority of your business in another state then you were illegally evading taxes.
The problem is that this was hard to enforce, so now they have changed the law to something much simpler: if any corporate officer or beneficial owner is a resident of California, then the business is subject to Californian taxation.
Is that true for intentional tax evasion? Certainly I've gotten a letter in the mail when I've messed up my tax return and owed money, because it was a simple mistake. But when it's clear that someone is doing something to intentionally not pay a tax that's owed, I don't think we should expect law enforcement to be polite about it.
Because, to the chagrin to many a statist in the HN comments, there are all sorts of legal precedents that prevent the .gov from rolling up with a swat team over petty civil violations with no aggrieved party other than the state.
So that I understand correctly: a person broke the law, the legal system used legal methods to deal with it, and he complained because he's a celebrity?
https://xkcd.com/1494/
He didn't break the law. The company was registered in Montana, and he bought the Ferrari in Texas where it was also destroyed in his "durability" test. Why should he pay taxes there? It's not a loophole it's just the law
Everyone wants to drive their Lambo on the moon with Montana plates thanks to social media clowns, and it has been this way since the blockchain craze of a few years ago.
I wonder if the Montana plates 'loophole' would be as well 'exploited' had it not been for the fictional world of YouTube.
It's really not a loophole, it's just how vehicle registration is done. That vehicle never drove into the state of Tennessee and was used for his business, why should it be registered where he lived and not where the company is set up?
And the IRS still requires US Citizens living and working abroad to file tax returns. Tennessee can decide how to tax its residents on their businesses and other assets. "It's just how taxation is done."
I’m sure they were able to put pressure on her in order to stay silent; or, they had a gag order placed on her.
If she was doing it for him, she was likely doing it for others and thus it was in her best interests to stay silent for one to protect the revenue stream from the others.
Yeah, I feel like if I were an accountant who wanted to be able to keep practicing in a state without legal issues, and the state told me "we're pretty sure your client was doing something illegal and think you might have known about it, so tell us everything you know and don't tell your client before we arrest them and we'll take into account your cooperation", I probably would also do what they suggested
There is no way his accountant actually told him to do a tax fraud meme. I’m sure he did it himself, then just plopped some random paperwork in the accounting portal and just assumed he’d be fine.
See, if you had chosen your accountant with vigor, you'd have found one that uses a canary trap that daily sends you an email that no government agency inquired about you today and then just don't send an email on the day they did. Make 'em earn their money!
Can I just take this moment to mention that I think we need a better system for car registrations across the board? I don't like that there are all these edge cases with titles, insurance, inspections/smog, window tint, plate expiry, taxes etc whenever you move or even travel. It feels like we've just turned vehicle ownership into a profit opportunity for the police to harass everyone over completely inconsequential nonsense the second you cross any state line (emissions/insurance aren't nonsense but bear with me pedants). Similarly it creates a mountain of work every time you move.
I wish you could just register under an LLC or trust or something wherever and have a generic plate that can go anywhere and force the states to agree on a set of standards that apply across the country.
Alternatively allow people to keep their plates indefinitely like phone numbers. Yes, this creates arbitrage opportunities but maybe we should be bringing up the standards of the arbitrage states instead of having assholes threaten everyone with guns for random infractions.
I'm kinda just throwing ideas out there but this current system is Kafkaesque.
Functionally, that's what already exists - the standards are dimensions and readability. There's no CA smog inspection station as you enter the state, this is about people abusing a loophole. I spent all 4 years of college in CA with a CA driver's license, a car with out of state plates, and zero Kafkaesque issues. Maybe tax avoidance loopholes are Kafkaesque because they're not how anyone is supposed to do things.
As one more wacky way to do it, some countries rivet the license plate to the car because the plates never change. They're basically shorthand for the VIN, so the owner and their place of residence don't matter, only where the car was first registered.
The UK system associates the plates with your car. This incurs basically two pieces of paperwork online when you sell it, one of which is also annual taxation.
The administration has gradually modernized so that all the legal requirements of tax/registration/insurance can be checked online.
However, there's a loophole that's apparently becoming popular: "ghost plates". Number plates aren't a secure document. They have no authenticity markers. So you can just.. print your own, slap them on, and you're very unlikely to get police attention. A subset of that is plates which are IR scattering so they don't show up on speed cameras.
> A subset of that is plates which are IR scattering so they don't show up on speed cameras.
Only these are "ghost plates". So called because the letters appear faint, or ghost like, on ANPR cameras.
Using illegal plates, either ghost ones or cloned ones (where they're real plates but for the wrong vehicle) are not loopholes, any more than breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff is a "loophole" for property ownership.
> However, there's a loophole that's apparently becoming popular: "ghost plates".
We don't call fake IDs either a loophole or "ghost IDs". When presented as identity documents, they're fraudulent identity documents. It doesn't matter if that ID is being presented to a bouncer in order to get in to a bar, or to everyone who cares to look at your car's bumper while it drives down the motorway, it's still a fake ID.
its not abusing a loophole. if something isnt in a state for more than 50% of the calendar year the state should have no claim to it. its a federal matter at the point cross border taxation IMO.
Moves to different states are just not that common for the average American, and I would prefer for states to retain the power to implement their own policies in this area. I would not want to see e.g. California unable to change emissions policy because Texas isn’t on board.
Complexity is a cost of our federal system and I am okay paying it in most cases.
I’m not sure what you mean by not that common. The ta millions of people a year- yes maybe it’s only ~1% of the population, buts it’s one percent every year, and I quarter you it’s no evenly distributed.
In my experience there's enough slack in practice for these edge cases. At least in CA, it's very strange for a cop to cite a tourist because their car is not road legal in CA but is road legal in their home state. I've known many people who just get off with warnings, sometimes years after they've actually moved to CA (and just never bothered re-registering their car their, even though that's technically legally required). Ofc YMMV
California is strange (for various reasons) but one of them is that it has a very large population, and a very long border with other states, and yet very little population near the borders (unless you count Mexico).
Based on the number of Hawaii/east coast/even a couple US forces (Germany) plates you see on the road near major bases in the Kitsap peninsula in WA…quite a few.
What portion of the military do you think owns vehicles that have tints that legal where they live but illegal on the other side of a state border within an hour of them? That still seems like an edge case to me.
And states do not require active service members to reregister their cars when they have moved on orders.
They do still have to comply with local laws, which makes sense. Just because you have Florida plates does not mean you don’t need all weather tires in Minnesota.
I'm not going to remove my legal tint to comply with rules for a state I don't live in. It's incredibly unlikely I'd get pulled over for it, but it is possible if a cop wanted a reason to pull me over.
If you go by the letter of the law (your legal residence is another state) then you should apply it uniformly (your vehicle's tint is illegal where you currently are). You can't pick and choose which technicalities apply to you.
If you go by the spirit of the law, then a grace period would be reasonable to apply to infrequent visitors. However, you travel there daily, so that does not apply to you.
Doesn’t really seem like you have a leg to stand on here.
Their tint law is stupid. See my previous comment on Crosstrek vs Impreza. Also, I've never heard of anyone getting pulled over for tint unless it's like really dark, so I'm not concerned, just pointing out it's ridiculous.
>Also, I've never heard of anyone getting pulled over for tint unless it's like really dark
Idk about the rest of the country, but in my experience in the southern US it's a pretty common tactic to pull you over for assumed illegal tint to try and catch you for other charges. Especially if you aren't white.
You're certainly entitled to think the law of a state you don't live in is stupid. The state you don't live in is equally entitled to not care whether people outside the state think a law is stupid.
Every time somebody decides to ram their suburban up the ass end of my car and flee the scene, the first thing the police ask is "did you get a good look at the driver" followed closely by "did you see the make/model/plates" and "what state was it registered in?" I don't have a lot of sympathy for windows dark enough to prevent me from making out the driver, the blatantly illegal license plate hiders so common in CA, and other such nonsense. If we want to adopt a policy of registration/licensure/insurance/whatever not being legally required for privacy reasons or something then that's one thing, but current policy tries to make sure people are responsible for their actions with a relatively small impact on privacy, and unless you're arguing against the broader issue then I think any tint law complaints are misplaced.
>the first thing the police ask is "did you get a good look at the driver" followed closely by "did you see the make/model/plates" and "what state was it registered in?"
If your argument for this law is that it forces people to incriminate themselves, that's really an argument that the whole thing should be thrown out.
Under no circumstances should you be able to be compelled to assist in your own prosecution, either directly or indirectly.
That law has nothing to do with incriminating yourself (it's more about safety), but even if the law was specifically "so someone can see into your window and identify you if you do something bad", that's still not self-incrimination. Self-incrimination is requiring someone to testify against themselves.
Your position boils down to: "I should be able to commit traffic violations anonymously because anything else is an infringement on my 5th amendment rights".
Basically you're saying that any law is invalid if it makes or ensures that any kind of wrongdoing visible to witnesses. That's absurd.
There are limits on the laws of a State when it involves inter-State commerce.
The US Supreme Court recognizes a general principle that you can transit a State with things that are illegal in that State. An individual State cannot impose a de facto ban on commerce between States, which includes the right to transport goods through a State in the normal fashion regardless of the laws of that State.
I'd be interested to know what case recognizes such a general principle. I would recommend not publicizing that you are transiting with cannabis from Oregon to Montana through Idaho, for example.
Yes because people can't be expected to make expensive modifications to their vehicles while visiting another state. And the law in Minnesota is ridiculous especially in situations like a Crosstrek vs an Impreza. They have the same body but the allowed tint levels are different because one is classified as an SUV and the other as a station wagon. I could lift my Impreza and make it look exactly like a Crosstrek, but the tint would still be illegal. I find that funny.
Okay, so if I buy something expensive, and then go to a different state, I should be exempted from laws saying it's illegal because I happen to disagree with them? That seems way more "funny" to me
That's not for you to decide, though. If you don't like a law, work to get it changed, don't visit the place that has that law, or stop doing what is breaking that law. Those are your options.
Even within California there are smog-exempt counties. This makes perfect sense, things like excess NOx simply don't matter if the population density is low enough which incidentally is also true of a lot of the rest of the country. CA is the strictest with smog-related, going as far as barring federal (non-CA) vehicles from being registered unless they're 7500+ miles on the odometer. Tint should be limited to 70% VLT nationally really, but that's another topic. Other than that some north-eastern states have safety inspections which makes total sense given the rust. By developed country standards we have it very easy.
I ran into a fun one when moving out of the country. Chrysler Town and Country I had bought in Washington state, we were flying out from CA. My thought was to unload the vehicle in the last week before flying.
Except no one would buy it, not even Carmax or any of the other "cash for cars" places! Turns out, the car was originally manufactured for Canada, and California doesn't recognize the Canadian smog regulations, even if the car was functionally identical down to the catalytic converter. No one would take the damn thing because they couldn't re-title it. I finally found one guy who would who seemed like he was taking a decent sized risk, but since I gave him a good price he decided he'd just give it his best shot. For all I know he may have had to (illegally) drive it to Nevada just to sell it.
Hey if you're interested IBM just developed one such system for the Quebec government (called SAAQClic) that was supposed to cost 638 millions but ended up costing 1.1 billion. We are desperate to monetize it so anything you want to pay to license is fine with us
That's kinda what I'm getting at I think. We've created a patchwork hell full of arbitrage and petty harassment and everyone's just kind of fine with it
Similarly, the car purchasing process is a nightmare. Carvana faced that one the hard way trying to sell across the US and ended up forming their own lobbying band to push for digital and electronic titling and registration.
The problem is you’re optimizing for bureaucratic efficiency over the needs of the people. There’s even issues with that at the state level that would be way worse.
So many Californians live in valleys that trap pollution. Strict emissions regulations have an immediate, tangible impact. South Carolina doesn’t have the same local issues and their standards vary. Likewise, tint stuff is mostly a police / safety issue, and is more of a problem in major metro areas. High tint is an issue in the Bronx. Not so much in rural Alabama.
I’d argue that the worst part of the system we have now is that we have a weird hybrid as disenfranchisement has become a political priority. Integration between states is driven by compacts between states and Canadian provinces and mediated through private entities like AAMVA and NLETS. That has facilitated other sharing agreements with insurers and other entities that is a serious and significant privacy violation.
We should be able to get a free passport card for identity, and make driving privilege licensure, vehicle registration, etc a purely state matter.
> The problem is you’re optimizing for bureaucratic efficiency over the needs of the people.
There's a reason there are 50 states and not just one federal land. The needs of the people of Montana are definitely different than the needs of New Yorkers, so expecting the two states to have the same laws is just illogical. It's also why things like the electoral college is a thing to prevent the population centers dictating what the rural people have to do.
The electoral college was created because citizens couldn’t reliably be expected to travel to vote. That time has long since passed, since voting stations are generally (modulo places that are actively shuttering them to disenfranchise people) scattered around enough that it’s not arduous.
Plenty of other countries with rural areas seem to do fine without one. They also usually have much better / more granular representation, instead of a hard cap of 435 for a population that is orders of magnitude larger than at the country’s founding.
The kind of pollution created by brakes and tires (namely, particulates) is much easier to filter out then tailpipe pollution and noise pollution are.
I wear a cheap disposable N95 mask when I walk along busy streets, which filters out probably at least 98% of the particulates. (The "95" in "N95" stands for 95%, but that is 95% of the particles that are hardest to filter: both smaller particles and larger particles are easier to filter. So since it is quite unlikely that all or most of the particles produced by brakes and tires are precisely the size that is hardest to filter, I estimate that my cheap $2 mask that can be reused for dozens walks is probably filtering at least 98%.)
In contrast noise pollution and tailpipe pollution (mostly gases) and fuel-tank-evaporation pollution (all gases) are much harder to filter (at least for pedestrians on the move) so a drastic reduction in one and a complete elimination of the other two is an extremely welcome development.
Specifically, the gaseous pollution from tailpipes and fuel tanks consists of many different compounds, many of which can be effectively absorbed by filtration media, but many of which cannot be. I don't bother to try to filter it out when I walk along busy streets because the filtration media makes the mask much bulkier and heavier than my N95 masks are and because the filtration media costs more (even plain activated carbon, the cheapest and most useful media for gases) and remains effective for a much shorter duration before it must be replaced.
We will not all (even 80% of us) be using electric vehicles in 10 years, or even 20 years. I don’t think even half of new vehicles will be fully electric by then, let alone half of all vehicles on the road.
I was with you in the first paragraph. As I was reading I was reminded of old Cold War-era Soviet Union.
You lost me in the next paragraph where your solution was to centralize even more into a committee that has the power to bulldoze over more locally relevant needs and desires
Nobody seems to recognize how deranged it is that we drive around with easily identifiable numbers plastered on our vehicle. This has seemed weird and privacy-violating to me since I was a kid, yet even today when people complain about Flock cameras they don’t complain about what the cameras are looking for.
What if gun owners had to walk around wearing a huge plate with their gun registration number when they wanted to carry a gun?
And why do driver’s licenses have all sorts of extraneous info (all you need is a biometric, like a photo, expiration date, class of license, and any restrictions)? Just because I walked into a bar or bought a beer at the supermarket doesn’t mean they should be allowed to harvest my address, DOB etc.
It's only required on public roads. You can drive on your own property all you like without plates.
I'm all for privacy for things that are truly private. But wanting to secretly consume public resources and remain unaccountable for harm to others is what I think is truly absurd. Although it's an increasingly popular one recently.
That's funny. The vast majority of people's "own property" they could drive on would be on average about 50 feet. I grew up on 3/4 acre lot, and my dad let me drive up and down the drive way to practice before I had a license, so I get what you mean. Just funny that it's such a bold suggestion knowing that it's applicable to such a small number of people
I'm pretty sure, most of these weird laws are for farmers/ranchers. For whatever reason, they chose to word it more generically that sounds ridiculous applying it to everyone. Just like the whole red dye diesel, farmers just get special carve outs to give them a fighting chance on surviving to be able to provide us affordable food.
That is more because the gas tax is intended to pay for the roads. Red-dye diesel is declaring your intention to use the vehicle exclusively off-road, and thus not needing to be subject to the gas tax.
I contend that the only sensible way to measure freedom (of which privacy is an aspect) is within the context of societal interactions. It's not particularly interesting to move to the middle of nowhere and be able to do do what you want while not interacting with others (what it takes for "on your own [real estate]" to be meaningful). The pertinent metric is how well society can maintain a level of individual liberty (ie tolerance) as it scales up in density of interactions.
And nobody said anything about wanting to be unaccountable for harm. Rather it's a matter of being vulnerable to ne'er do wells. When we get a US GDPR equivalent with teeth, develop a widespread societal taboo against the surveillance industries, and so on, then we can talk about an equitable tradeoff with accountability for harm. Until then, the dynamic is an overwhelming vulnerability.
That analysis seems pretty confused to me. Freedom without accountability for harm to others is nonsensical.
As is dramatizing license plates as "overwhelming vulnerability". Just look at the US's 40k traffic deaths per year, with countless lesser injuries and accidents. Balanced against which specific harms of license plates?
The problem with Flock, etc, is their massive, unaccountable, for profit surveillance, which uses much more than license plates, and is working hard to move beyond them.
Nobody but you has said anything about "freedom" from accountability for harm.
The specific harms are exemplified by things like Flock, but also individual businesses tracking, private investigators, etc. If you want to stop that harm other ways, I've already agreed that I would find that acceptable. But until something actually changes on that front, it's not really an argument!
Given modern technology, we can imagine different ways that would provide less of a general vulnerability while actually providing more of the accountability you're putting foremost. Imagine say e-ink plates or a radio beacon that rotated the broadcasted identifier every minute, only being linkable through a database with an audit trail, etc.
Setting aside how things are, I'm curious about this thought experiment:
> You have zero right to a car. It is a privilege, one that you should be able to lose a lot easier.
Do I have a right to feed myself and my family?
If yes, is that right absolute or relative?
If absolute, and my ability to feed requires me to commute in a car, is having a car a right or a privilege?
Next, assume I cannot use my legs and need an electric wheelchair to move around. Do I have a right to an electric wheelchair? What if that electric wheelchair has 50 miles of range which is more than sufficient for my daily commute and more.
Am I now at an advantage compared to a person who needs a car for that exact same commute?
There are no "absolute" rights. All rights you have are limited by the rights other people have. You don't even have a truly absolute right to your own death in most places.
You do not have a right to drive a car in the United States. It is a privilege for which you must be licensed, which necessarily means you can lose your license and not be able to drive. There are medical conditions which absolutely prohibit you from driving. At least in the state where I did Drivers Ed, if you had certain kinds of seizures you could not drive again until you'd been seizure free for 18 months. It is your responsibility to arrange your life to match that.
No matter what other thought experiment you create, you do not have a right to drive a car in the US, it can be revoked quite easily.
> But hey, I'm sure you're the first to vote against any measures that would actually improve things like urban density or public transportation.
To the contrary.
I don't believe in being punitive and taxing people who live a life different from mine or hold conflicting beliefs.
I don't believe in lecturing people on how they should live their lives as long as they don't start to lecture me on how I should mine.
If someone wants to live in a rural county and drive to and from work or groceries 20 hours a day, they're welcome to. They are adults.
If someone on the other hand wants to live right next to the train and bus station, so they can take a ride right out of their balcony, they're welcome to do so as well. They are adults.
I do not assume a right over another person's decision and freedom to choose how they want to live their own life as long as they don't tamper with my own. We are adults.
The United States was built on these very ideals: mini, hyper-localized governance than a larger centralized governance that is not in touch with the people they govern.
Unfortunately, that philosophy has been lost to time, and people in coastal cities in California seem to feel perfectly comfortable lecturing ranch hands in Montana what to do and how to live their lives.
> The United States was built on these very ideals: mini, hyper-localized governance than a larger centralized governance that is not in touch with the people they govern.
That's a common tale of American mythos, but it's not really an accurate portrayal of American history. Hyper-local governance only really existed in New England and never spread outside of it. Most governance centered on states which are--let's be frank--small countries: the median state in population and area is around 40th percentile among world countries, so smaller than average, but not by that much. And if you look throughout the history of states' rights in US history, invariably those advocating for states' rights are bleeding hypocrites. Note that, e.g., when the southern states established the Confederate States of America, they expressly forbid their own states from having the rights they were claiming for themselves in the antebellum period.
Indeed, in many cases, the more localized governance really turns out to just be people who have lost the political debate at the national level, and thus unable to impose their views on everybody, settling for imposing them at the state level and eagerly oppressing those within the jurisdictions where they can win from exercising their differing views.
>how they want to live their own life as long as they don't tamper with my own. We are adults.
lol, you were then eaten by a bear of your own making.
You see, when you're deathmobile is f=mv2 down the highway you present a clear and present danger to every one around you. It doesn't matter if your 5, 55 or 95 physics gives zero shits about your libertarian ideas as your broke ass kills 3 people and leaves one a quadriplegic requiring millions of dollars in care for the rest of their miserable life.
>Unfortunately, that philosophy has been lost to time
Yea, guess what happens when you connect the world together so were milliseconds away digitally, and 3 days away from each other with modern travel. Suddenly the dumb shit we do effects everyone around us and in our profound ignorance make the world worse for everyone around us. Hyper-localized doesn't exist unless you want to dump all telecommunications in the trash and burn all the cars and planes the go back to horses.
You act like the founding fathers, if transported to today, would be completely incapable of making logically informed decisions based on the current state of the world, and not a world 250 years in their past.
> and people in coastal cities in California seem to feel perfectly comfortable lecturing ranch hands in Montana
And the people in Montana are perfectly fine with making laws at the federal level that effect people in California.
> Unfortunately, that philosophy has been lost to time, and people in coastal cities in California seem to feel perfectly comfortable lecturing ranch hands in Montana what to do and how to live their lives.
The rural folk in Wyoming and Montana get far more say relative to their populace on how Californians should live than vice versa.
It's not urban versus rural. That... is just another variation of having more vote proportional to your land. Land doesn't vote, people do. But in the US, land also votes some, which seems ironic given a nation founded in part on getting away from rights largely embued by how much land you own.
To be fair, it's only privacy-violating if you have access to a way to lookup who owns the blue Toyota Corolla with license plate 1ABC234. The Driver Privacy Protection Act makes it illegal to disclose PII based on a license plate
A single bumper sticker or distinctive paint color or a dent in the door can be just as immediately identifying as a license plate at that level. Even in places where the plate is always the same for the car and doesn't change when it's sold, it's just a way to tell one vehicle apart from another.
Case in point, my user name is a license plate number of a total stranger, and I imagine you'd be hard pressed to even tell me the color of the car, let alone their name and address. I'm not asking you to doxx someone, but saying it's not trivially easy for the average person, even when considering the boatload of data broker information out there on every individual.
Don't plate numbers technically belong to records held by the state? They aren't really private information for an individual (and I think you can request new numbers at any time, no?).
I think the only reason we enforce showing the plates is so the police can easily see if a vehicle is allowed to be on the roads from their own vehicles during traffic stops. We don't have police out patrolling for gun owners, but if we did I bet we would see more public "gun registration plates" for convenience purposes.
As for drivers licenses at bars, again, it's just convenience. We could split all that info into separate little cards and only show what we need to, but we've collectively decided the risk is very low that a bar or supermarket is going to track our address and DOB as we flash them to buy booze.
> we've collectively decided the risk is very low that a bar or supermarket is going to track our address and DOB as we flash them to buy booze.
That's not "low risk"; that actually happens, a lot. Many bars and supermarkets will scan the barcode on the back of your license when they do the check. Of course everything on it goes into a database to help build a profile about you.
We used to do this in Wisconsin for hunting. Large permit tag you had to clip on your back, looked just like a license plate. They got rid of it about a decade ago when everything was going digital.
Do you wear a name tag in public with your SSN, or some unique identifying information on it? If not, why not?
If I asked you to vote on this, would you vote in favor for it?
Why not? People can strangle other people so it makes sense to know who is who at all times in the case that someone strangles someone else and then tries to run away.
If this isn't making sense yet - This is as sensible as expecting software engineers to walk around with equipment that prominently display uniquely identifying information because computers can be used to hack and doxx people.
The fact that license plates were/are necessary is to address shortcomings of technology.
Most states in 2026 are slowly removing the need to display license plates at all because it never made sense but had to be done to address shortcomings that are no longer so in 2026.
If you think that the chances of a random person strangling someone else is the same as the chances of a person with a gun shooting someone else, I'm not really sure what to tell you.
> And why do driver’s licenses have all sorts of extraneous info (all you need is a biometric, like a photo, expiration date, class of license, and any restrictions)?
That's just the US being stupid and using driver's licenses as primary identity documents. (And if you don't have a passport or other ID document, you're part of that problem.)
(Fun fact: I have 2 passports, 1 driver's license and 1 residence permit. None of those have my address. To be fair, they all have my DOB, that's really considered mandatory for any ID document around here.)
I don't think it's deranged at all, driving is a privilege not a right, you need a license for it, and a license for almost anything has requirements to follow.
The requirement to identify the vehicle for enforcement of the licensing requirements is not at all strange.
Don't get a license if you don't agree with the requirements for it. Would you be saying the same thing for aircraft?
Unless you're willing to spend money, you can't just go online to find the registration info for a plate number. It's not impossible, but it's definitely not as simple as flipping through the pages of the phone book to look up someone's address and number.
It is worth considering that without being able to identify people then only unacceptable behaviour that rises to the level of needing and having an immediate response can actually be punished.
It's the qualitative change than comes with the change in quantity and ease of monitoring (and accessibility of that info) that means being identifiable is so much worse now days.
Tell that to felons. Or people with diagnosed mental health issues of certain types.
The idea of a "right" is hilarious. Whenever you have an entity (like a government) that has the power of force or imprisonment over you, everything is a privilege.
I can't think of very many "rights" that haven't been abridged, curtailed, or violated by governments in ways that have been held to be legal when reviewed by courts.
Someone could compile every vehicle regulation from all the states into one common list. It'd be more restrictive than any single state, but it would be consistent. And if someone doesn't like it, they can fall back to their local laws.
this pretty much exists. thats where the malformed plate info generated by Fluck gets input and results in drivers of partial match plates 4 to 6 states from the away getting pulled out of cars at gunpoint. registration is just a different dataset in the same system. 20+ years ago most PD dispatches had a terminal dedicated to out of state registration lookups... today its in the patrol car.
This is the cost of living in a federated republic. Power is diffuse across the states so they all have different opinions on how to go about things like vehicle registrations and insurance. The only alternative is for states to relinquish the power over vehicle registrations/plates/insurance requirements to the federal government which could enforce a universal standard, but I'm sure given current events you would see why that would be a terrible idea.
I think as programmers we naturally want a single, universal standard for everything, but there are genuine advantages to having the current system as well, even with all of its flaws.
Except that states want their pound of flesh; California is definitely no exception.
There are entities that are federal registrations (eg: an aircraft with an "N-number" -- that N-number is federal) that individual states still try really hard to tax the same way as cars/trucks. Individual counties even take a stab at this.
It seems that the rules might be there for some benefit but mostly the rules help the state/county make income.
> and force the states to agree on a set of standards that apply across the country
To rephrase, you're asking that the same license plate work across all of the European Union.
To realize why this is unrealistic, one has to go back to history and understand the core concept of the United States of America. It's right there in the name itself. It was a compromise to unite and bring agreement across all these disparate states that were in their very own right entire countries (and most, even till date, most states in the US continue to be larger, geographically than most countries in the world), agree on some very basic terms so there could be trade across them, kind of like the European Union.
> but this current system is Kafkaesque
Of course, this license plate registration thing was optimized for tax and fee collection, and it does that job very well. All it takes is for someone to run for office and say they're going to overturn it all.
That standardizes the visual appearance, but not the semantics or issuance of the plates. EU residents are generally required to re-register a car when changing which country they reside in, which in turn has its own rules for what constitutes permanent residence.
And by comparison, all jurisdictions in the US and Canada have long agreed to a common set of physical/visual standards for license plates, despite variation between jurisdictions on the rules for registering vehicles.
Window tint isn't nonsense, either. I think every stanced-out pickup with a tinted windshield should be apprehended and destroyed the instant it crosses my state's line.
States have so many variances on what kind of tint is legal and sometimes just absurd rules. For example, Minnesota has very little limitations on tinting SUVs but strict limits on cars. A Subaru Crosstrek is pretty much a lifted Impreza. The tint on my Impreza is illegal in Minnesota, but would be legal if it was a Crosstrek.
So a race to the bottom on licensing/taxation/safety/insurance/emissions? But only for those wealthy enough to have family trusts?
No. Each state needs the power to set minimum standards as to who can drive what. I don't want to see millionaires be allowed to drive around without insurance in unsafe cars simply because their daddy purchased them a share in a Delaware family-held plates LLC.
Ya, good luck trying to defend your 2$ out-of-state trust in local court when it is sued after not having proper insurance to cover the cars it "owns". But wait, you won't even be allowed into court as you need to be a lawyer to represent a corporate entity.
pretty sure in a lot of these cases it’s already illegal, enforcing the law is another matter. someone actually has to pull over the montana plate owner, then the state has to sue them for tax evasion, build the case, etc. Thats just not gonna happen. ideally there would be a nationwide standard for registration and taxes.
also the new hot thing in california is to have dealer plates on your million dollar car. you never register it, never pay taxes, but it’s still legal to drive. you just need to own a dealership, but on paper again that’s not hard if you’re rich
It's wild that buying a car dealership that you have no need for other than to avoid taxes is somehow considered more reasonable than just, like, paying the taxes.
These kind of people are bored from already having every material possession they could ever want; so they turn to playing these kind of games to impress their peers.
> you just need to own a dealership, but on paper again that’s not hard if you’re rich
You're technically correct, but a dealership is one of the most highly taxed entities in California. In any city or county, a dealership, dollar for dollar, pays one of the highest taxes than any business there.
So this recommendation is similar to stabbing yourself in the stomach and waiting to bleed out so that you weigh less on the scale - there are other details, most people don't care about, with those dealer plates on one's million dollar car that has to do more with insurance, liability and taxes than fees to the CA DMV.
> someone actually has to pull over the montana plate owner, then the state has to sue them for tax evasion, build the case, etc. Thats just not gonna happen
But that's because that's not the path the FTB follows!
The reasonable path that has been taken is the FTB finds out that you, as a Californian, own plates in Montana and send you a bill for the registration plus fees and punitive damages so you reconsider pulling the stunt again. If you don't respond in 90 days, it's sent directly to your bank as a demand letter. If you have at least one bank that has a California domicile, that bank is going to pay out from your funds immediately.
> You're technically correct, but a dealership is one of the most highly taxed entities in California. In any city or county, a dealership, dollar for dollar, pays one of the highest taxes than any business there.
That's true for most dealerships, but most of the taxes are transaction based (probably some for property tax on inventory though). If you have a sham dealership that primarily exists so you can have dealer plates and to massage transactions on your personal vehicles, you can probably avoid a lot of taxes.
Not my style, I just left the state when I was tired of everything. I'm happier where I landed, but if people want to live in California and use out of state plates, that's less people where I am, so go nuts.
> probably some for property tax on inventory though
Most dealerships in the last three decades have not owned their own inventory for a long time. Trade-ins are held by dealerships in a manner very different than just "owning" them outright. These are all financed, leveraged deals.
> If you have a sham dealership that primarily exists so you can have dealer plates and to massage transactions on your personal vehicles, you can probably avoid a lot of taxes
I would imagine you have not worked at a dealership or don't own one, so let's not continue this discussion further because you are severely underestimating what it costs in California (both in time and money) to be a dealer.
> I'm happier where I landed, but if people want to live in California and use out of state plates, that's less people where I am, so go nuts
It's actually great to talk to a transplant because most of my relatives and friends have moved to other states, whereas I've stood steadfast.
Are you happy where you are? What made you be in California? Did you grow up here? Was it for work?
Would you come back if California was split into two, where one part of California was closer politically or regulatory to Texas or Florida?
> I would imagine you have not worked at a dealership or don't own one, so let's not continue this discussion further because you are severely underestimating what it costs in California (both in time and money) to be a dealer.
Fair, but I can't imagine it takes that much time if you don't actually do any transactions or hold any inventory, except for the transactions around the cars you want to drive. I don't know what it costs to be a licensed car dealer that doesn't actually do any transactions, but for a lot of people, it's not really about the money, it's about exploiting loopholes so you can pay something else instead of sales tax on your fancy car.
I was born in Southern California. I went to Milwaukee for college, then came back and got a job in sillycon valley. I'm not going back (except to visit), it's too crowded and I don't like people. Especially in places with weather I like. For roughly twice the price of my small house on a postage stamp lot, I'm on 8 acres with a house that's too big... I did well in the startup lottery, but I can't afford to go to an open house for 8 acres anywhere in California that I'd choose to live.
Caveat: ifn my kiddo establishes himself in California and has kids and would like us closer, we'd probably consider it. He's in high school right now, so that's some time from now. We will want to downsize to a smaller house by then (although probably still don't want to be close to neighbors)
you don't even have to be rich. it's not much more onerous than a generic small business. i know more than one 2-car-inventory dealerships.
but it's only worth the effort if you are rich enough to buy cars that incur substantial tax and reg fees. you still need to have insurance and the dealership kind of insurance costs a lot. you probably aren't going to get umbrella coverage to include it either, so you'll have more limited liability.
Huh, similar situation in Italy: “Tens of thousands of Italian drivers have purchased Polish number plates for their cars and motorbikes in an elaborate scheme to evade road taxes and pay lower insurance premiums.
An estimated 60,000 motorists — mostly in and around Naples — have been enticed by the promise of 70 per cent savings on road tax and insurance fees to transfer ownership of their vehicles to shell companies in Poland and register the vehicles there, according to an industry group.
Now with Italy’s general election looming, Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing coalition has announced “the elimination” of the unpopular annual road tax that helped spawn the evasion schemes. The bollo auto will be cut for an estimated 14.5mn small and midsized vehicles — a giveaway that will cost Italy’s already strained public coffers an estimated €2.4bn in lost revenue next year” [1].
This problem is older and existed already before the pandemic, but instead of Polish plates it was German/French, as those countries didn't have such expensive insurance and it was easy to have a foreign branch of a company register one's company car.
The first crackdown was also before the pandemic and being Polish and in-and-out of Italy I fully expected to get caught in the crossfire, but that never happened.
Apparently I was driving too much like a tourist - indicators and all.
That being said a few people from the local Polish community got into trouble, but it always first due to driving into a Zona a Traffico Limitato with a car that shouldn't be there - plates notwithstanding.
Paying bollo is not the main reason. Bollo is around 100-200€ a year.
Third Party Insurance for cars is mandatory and in Naples, due to high level of fraud, it can amount to 1500-2000€ a year.
Using a Polish insurance, or a fake Polish insurance, is the main reason to get a Polish license plate.
Luckily the loop hole is being closed by the Polish authorities after it became popular.
This usually relates to their real costs. The problem is that there's a lot of fraud, which they don't always detect, and car repairs are getting more expensive as cars get more complicated. Increasingly cars are being written off for what looks like minor damage.
Not a big deal I guess, CA can collect taxes now. Seems like a small problem to try to solve. From my perspective, too many influencers parading this around raised some ire.
The law could benefit from a "content crime", similar to a "hate crime". If you break the law, for the purpose of creating content, you get fucked in the ass. That would have worked for Whistlin'. "You voilated TN tax law, while being an internet clown".
Living in an east coast metro area, owning a 20yo car that doesn't pass smog and needs a lot of work to get there is a thorn in my side. So I've got a car I can't register and slowly fix on weekend. It'd prefer an additional tax on my registration for not passing smog, rather than not be able to register it and the car be rendered illegal.
I've always found that a bit odd. CA is especially determined to make "any employee's child's dog exists in CA occasionally" a liability for the corresponding business. I'd be quite tempted as a new business owner to make spending more than 9 consecutive days in CA a fireable offense just to avoid these sorts of shenanigans. It's nice that they closed a "loophole," but they opened a bunch of other nonsense in the process.
Drafting gap just moved the loophole: put the car in a Montana trust with an independent Montana trustee that the California beneficiary uses in California.
Requiring registration merely because an out-of-state vehicle spends more time in California than in any other single state raises a serious dormant Commerce Clause problem.
Scheiner specifically emphasized that the interstate registration system avoids requiring a vehicle to pay more than one full registration fee.
Why do you think they made this new law? It gets them to what they actually want, which is collecting tax.
Why not have something reasonable, and pay just the sum for given part of the year? So if vehicle spent 120 days at X, pay (120/365)xSUM, and the other place pays the rest (or X
Y places).
Thats primary school level of math that in 2026 would be trivial yo implement, if fairness is the goal. We have such thing in Switzerland, you dont pay flat yearly fees/taxes/insurances if you register your car in december for example
I don't think that's trivial to implement at all, and it leaves much more room for people to be dishonest about it, without a good way for them to check.
Re: the pro-rate for a December registration, in California at least, registrations are renewed on the date you first registered, not based on the calendar year, so there's no need for a pro-ration.
What most people end up doing is just not registering their car after moving to CA. You will see cars parked in california neighborhoods for years with texas plates where the registration sticker on the windshield is from like 2021. Some cars just running fake paper plates or even no plates at all.
I've seen car dealers in MA use Montana dealer plates. At the very least they are cheaper, avoids $220 / year excise tax and registration fees vs. $25 for Montana. I don't think it helps with any sales taxes- dealers don't have to pay when they buy cars, unlike customers. It would help if dealer uses the car personal reasons instead of just having it for resale.
Hmm... maybe I should start a car dealer just to avoid taxes on my next car..
The Montana plate for owners reminds of registering your boat in Wilmington Delaware to avoid state sales tax. You had to create an LLC to do this I think.
I think the reqs were 12 years old and $171 or $271
Coming from $300/yr colorado insurance its a steal
I'm full time in a camper right now so this entire conversation is extra fun because I don't have a physical address anywhere which is a whole other ball of worms just insuring and registering my truck.
this is actually happening in california now. a lot of people are using dealer plates on expensive cars they just drive around normally. no registration, no taxes.
Washington needs to adopt this policy as well. I have a neighbor who moved 3 houses down a few years ago who brought 4 cars with her from Montana and never registered any of them.
To me at least, the scenario of moving from Montana to Washington, and leaving cars registered to Montana, seems less wrong than the commonly abused loophole.
As I understand, a fairly large number of people register cars in Montana while never living in the state.
Edit: Just to add, maybe the scenario you described should be cracked down on, but it feels like less purposeful avoiding/evading a tax. My opinion is that could come afterwards, with more warning given to people.
Montana person here. I'm on the other side of this trade: trying to buy cars in California[1] that I'm going to register in Montana. My experience has been that it's very hard to exploit this "loophole". I know that because even not trying to exploit the loophole. I have to jump through hoops to prove to a dealer that I really live in Montana. And then the car has to be either put on a transporter, taken to the border (or all the way to Montana), or driven by an employee of the dealership to the border. Then we have to get paperwork notarized by someone at the border that the vehicle really left CA. You also have to pledge in writing that you wont bring the car back into CA except for maintenance. I've had dealers in LA just plain refuse to sell me a car because I lived in Montana. So it was not in recent years anything like as easy as "put a Montana plate on it" <waves hand>.
The article calls the ownership entities "fake LLCs". They were in fact completely real kosher Montana LLCs. The issue at hand is that CA wants to disallow the case where the LLC is owned by someone who is a CA resident.
That's not the same as "fake".
Finally, anyone from California should experience the Montana DMV (called MDT here). It's like checking into the Four Seasons compared to the CA DMV! You can phone them and they'll answer within a few rings and help you out. You can go down to their office at the court house and perhaps have to wait in line for 5 minutes, but perhaps just walk straight up to the counter. They will help you figure out vanity plate letters, endlessly checking whether ideas you have are already registered. I almost make up excuses to go to the DMV, it's so nice there. Montana also has a system of sponsored plates. There are about 100 of them, which allows you to choose a plate of almost any color, which is nice if you want it to match the car color.
[1] Why do that? Well there are 100X more cars for sale in CA, and the prices are lower.
And the federal government has an 18 cent per gallon excise tax on gas which is used to fund the federal highway trust, which issues grant money for local road construction projects. It's still gas taxes funding the projects, just making a potentially unnecessary round trip through a federal bureaucracy.
Vehicle registration and taxation is one of those things that made sense on a state level back when economies were more regional and auto travel wasn’t so ubiquitous. Now that both are no longer true, a patchwork system of 50+ different schemes makes it trivial to exploit loopholes.
This is one of those functions best handled at a national level and dispersed proportionally back to the states based on population relative to total registrations. It doesn’t have to mean the end of local or vanity plates (those could still persist with local DMVs functioning as federal tax collecting agents), but moving to a national or international scheme makes increasing sense.
When someone first explained the montana loophole, I couldn't believe it was legal, and the consensus at the time was that no, it wasn't actually legal. If you got into an accident, you'd have some difficult explaining to do to your insurance. What the state did here was make it more obvious that people shouldn't be doing this.
The real loophole for normal people is that CA outsources smog checks, there are facebook groups advertising that they will pass your car -- the one without catalytic converters, for example. California is this interesting blend of lawlessness and rule-following, high taxes but also tons of absurdly low taxes (think Prop 13).
Don't know about California but running a car without a catalytic converter while stationary and having kids in it would imho be child abuse via poisoning. And those enabling it should be liable.
this has been my synopsis on tax matters, if you talk about it then it will get changed
so everyone should just pretend that they’re paying sky high taxes and let the broken tax sheltering strategies land poorer people in prison and never talk about the effective ones to anyone except your lawyer
I don't get how it's constitutional for them to levy a tax on an officer of a company that does not live in the state just because one officer of the company does live in the state. Even weirder the law does not require the one officer that does live in California to have a company car. In other words they are trying to tax out of state cars with no proof those cars were ever in the state. This is gonna cause a mess in the courts.
They only tax the assets that are held in the state. I don't know where you're getting that they will tax out of state cars.
> If anyone running the business is a California resident (by the updated definition outlined above), then the whole business is a California resident, and any assets (including Lamborghinis and Bugattis) held in the state are subject to California taxation.
They're not levying a tax on an officer of the company, they're levying a tax on the company if the company brings assets into the state within 12 months of purchase (so the whole point is there is proof the cars are being used in the state). But since a company can't go to jail, the California officers operating the company are on the hook if the company happens to have weirdly empty balance sheets and can't collect what is owed. And this bill specifically only targets any-share owners of just "shell" companies, which tend to have those weirdly empty balance sheets. Normal companies fall under existing california laws.
I mean, we can continue to pick apart the legal language, or we can acknowledge that if people invent elaborate loopholes to avoid paying taxes, the State will adapt and create elaborate corrections to collect those taxes. This is just a cat and mouse game of greed vs. fairness being played out in real-time.
I think the tax hole loop is a bit annoying but I also find it annoying that CA won't allow you to register a shitload of cars in the state, period.
It's due to the asinine carb laws. Even if you have a car that would pass smog, they won't let you register it. I don't see this doing anything when a ton of vehicles get a pass. For instance, all motorcycles don't fall under this rule and they are the biggest polluters out there.
It's just dumb.
All these complaints people have about cars - yet don't see any legislation out there that's bringing the clean energy public transit revolution. Just more rules without any relief.
California is over-regulated and over taxed, "the government knows best, give us all your money and we will take care of you and save the planet". Just leave people alone and let them have a good life and do what they want within reason without trying to suck the life out of every penny.
California's pretty big, possibly too big, and the dense population centers in the Bay Area and SoCal may be dominating state-level politics at the expense of regions with different economic and political interests.
That’s a meaningless data point without a comparison to a state with similar weather, nature, and economic momentum from a time less onerously regulated.
the summary presented by the drive feels like an overreach. but we live in the world of can't have nice things so there you go i guess.
i doubt there's all that many beneficial owners of montana businesses that live in california, but surely there are many nevadans and oregonians that straddle the border and will get unfairly caught up in this.
There seems to be a lot of varied and interesting perspectives and lengthy debates on this thread, but the core issue is California is in debt and needs all the money it can get.
The California DMV is a fees collection arm and not customer friendly. For example, a lot of Californians don't even know that there is something called PNO, or "planned non-operation", a status possible for vehicles they don't plan to run or use on public streets, where they stop paying recurring registration fees that are now in the hundreds of dollars a year.
Every year, I'm aware of at least a few people who do not have an operational car or have a second car in their garage that they are still paying registration fees for, or the state of California places a lien on their unused vehicle, just because that person is unaware that they can just stop paying registration fees on their car by filing a PNO in time.
First you have to know this PNO status exists, and then you have to file it correctly within a short 90 day window. There are no exceptions, even if you prove you were in a coma or out of state or country. I'm not going to go into the details of how draconian the process of bringing a car out of PNO is. For example, if you have a car that has passed smog in October, you put a PNO in October and you bring it back out of PNO in November, they're going to make you smog it nonetheless - pretty expensive process that costs now atleast a hundred dollars all in, which runs counter to California's own policy of not requiring a smog within 90 days of the recent smog test.
If the DMV was customer empathetic and friendly, they would have by default, placed any cars that have not been registered in time, on PNO. Later, the person who pays the registration then automatically gets their car moved from PNO to registered status.
However, this is not how the DMV operates: They will continue to tax you and fine you and add interest on top of all the fees for a car you do not plan to operate.
So all the debate about whether this is right or if there is another way of doing it etc is missing the entire point because none of that is the objective.
The entire point is to collect taxes and fees to fund a ballooning, unchecked and ever-growing expense account.
Every time you pay your registration in CA (either online or through the mail) they ask if you want to register PNO or not. Also, it’s not free (like $20) to register PNO, so doing it automatically would still result in an unpaid bill.
> Every time you pay your registration in CA (either online or through the mail) they ask if you want to register PNO or not
If we agree that owning a car for most people (I'm sure there are exceptions for collectors etc, that don't concern me) requires either paying registration or the PNO, why is not the PNO automatic choice until someone pays the registration?
That way, any car not registered is already on PNO and the owner has to do nothing. What's wrong with that?
Why is PNO not retroactive? Why is its active window only a short 90 days?
Cops can still pull over an late/unregistered car and ticket it. CA civil code authorizes the towing of any car that's due registration at the owner's expense, so why these additional restrictions?
> so doing it automatically would still result in an unpaid bill
I would imagine a $20 bill would be appreciated by most people over a $200 one.
A 20% late fee on a $20 bill is still lower than on $200.
Because there'd be a lot more non-compliance if they did it the way you suggest. Policing that costs time and money, and they'll never recover all of that money.
And regardless, the default is not PNO because not-PNO is the default. The vast majority of people will be driving on public roads and won't be eligible for PNO.
> The entire point is to collect taxes and fees to fund a ballooning, unchecked and ever-growing expense account.
And the problem with that is that at some point people just vote with their money, their feet and the future wealth they're going to create and GTFO to greener pastures.
There is such a ting as diminishing returns on insane taxation. France is an example. But billionaires leaving California is a thing too.
I did personally decided my native country gave me jack shit in return for my taxes: the only thing it'd give me would be ever more public servants collecting ever more taxes, all the while driving my native city (Brussels / Belgium) into the ground.
So I packed my stuff and left for a country with less taxes and which is, IMO, better managed and where you don't feel like the state's only mission is to turn you into someone poor by seizing all your wealth.
No wealthy person is going to save money by relocating from California to avoid a $30-40k tax bill on an exotic car. Wealthy people have a beach house in California because they like California.
The people who relocate to avoid taxes are upper-middle class people who are overextended on their finances.
Well they go through the trouble to form an LLC in Montana to own the car, to (illegally) avoid that tax bill. So clearly the tax isn't something they are just happy to pay. The LLC probably owns the beach house too, for some other tax dodge.
But you can’t buy a beach house in Montana.
The point being they still prefer living in California while mooching off residents who paid for the roads they want to drive on.
Disagree - wealthy people don't become wealthy by giving all their money to the government. Expensive cars generally retain a decent value, but the taxes paid evaporate.
Many people don't relocate, but instead try to figure out a way to save a bunch of money on a large purchase - why pay more if it can be avoided?
A wealthy person would spend much more than the tax bill on an exotic car just in relocation costs
> Many people don't relocate, but instead try to figure out a way to save a bunch of money on a large purchase - why pay more if it can be avoided?
There isn’t one, nor was there ever. You always had to pay CA sales tax on cars that were primarily used in CA. The only thing the Montana plate ever did was to make it easier to plausibly lie to cops when you get pulled over… not the kind of shit a wealthy person’s accountant is recommending
The majority of people who did the Montana “loophole” in California were always overextended yahoos trying to save 40k to look richer than they are. It was always illegal to do in CA.
Because not paying is tax evasion. If you go abroad, purchase a $50k watch, get a VAT refund then fail to declare, US Customs will fine you and probably pull your trusted traveler status. Are those people going to leave the US?
If someone’s accountant is even mentioning their sales tax bill on their car to them, they might be cosplaying as wealthy.
The tax evaders who are being targeted here aren’t wealthy people, they’re people who couldn’t afford the tax bill on their financed Lambo because they need that money for the gap insurance.
It adds up. And in a state with tens of thousands of high net worth individuals, that marginal tax increase might be the nudge that causes a few of them to relocate to a lower tax jurisdiction.
...and yet, the number of people willing to emigrate to live next to the "rich sociopaths" of sportscar-owning California is far greater than the # trying to emigrate to live amongst the poor, kind people of, say, Cuba.
What are you talking about? HN was a site for people aspiring to BE the rich, in the sense that it was operated by and revolves around a startup accelerator.
I don't know where you heard this, but it is not true. HN is filled with people with many opinions about the rich, and also many rich people, and has always been.
Startup News, created by a founder of the venture capital incubator Y Combinator, did not ever uniformly hate the rich. It is sponsored by the extremely rich, and only exists because they wished it into existence and maintain it.
> “The bill would hold any officer, manager, partner, beneficial owner, or member of a shell company personally liable for any unpaid taxes, and any interest and penalties on those taxes, the nonpayment of which may constitute a crime, due on the purchase of a vehicle, vessel, or aircraft.”
Is dumb.
You want comprehensive enforcement with reasonable penalities.
I don't think it will hold up in federal courts. This seems to apply to cars that the company officer who lives and drives in Montana as well. If this only applies to cars used more than 50% in CA is would hold up. Of course truck drivers who mostly don't drive in CA but that is home may find an out with that plan.
The core of the law, ie who is expected to register their car in CA and what state sales taxes need to be paid has already been in place for years and likely already challenged. This is just a modifier to address a particular loophole.
As long as nothing about this crosses state lines (ie they’re not trying to regulate out of state businesses or property) there’s not a lot to go on. Several states have taken similar steps to close this loophole. Famously the YouTuber whistlindiesel got arrested in Tennessee for this and the case is still pending
Details matter and the article may have them wrong, but my reading is this accidentally covers out of state cars as well. I'm not going to look up the law to see who is right though.
The cars are registered in MT but they’re under CA jurisdiction if they are primarily driven here. That’s the literal loophole. CA is not trying to force people to pay CA registration and sales tax on cars kept and used primarily out of state.
That is the intent of course. However it is really easy to write a law that missing important details and so despite the intent cover all cars regardless of where they are used.
> If anyone running the business is a California resident (by the updated definition outlined above), then the whole business is a California resident, and any assets (including Lamborghinis and Bugattis) held in the state are subject to California taxation.
I'm relying on the paraphrasing in article rather than the text of the law itself, but this says that it only applies to assets held in the state.
Gas leaf blowers are a menace to society that should not be allowed in any urban or suburban area. (If you want to use one on your farm or whatever, go for it.)
The ban is useless because the only way to enforce it is to catch it in the act (in my town). Basically impossible. So it is a ban that could be enforced (other ways) but instead is just a suggestion - and not one that most people follow because there are almost no repercussions.
There are some unavoidable sources of noise, so I'm not sure a blanket noise restriction is going to work. If someone is doing home renovation and the contractor needs to run a saw for a while, it's just going to be loud. Sometimes someone needs to jackhammer up a slab of concrete, or chip up tree pruning debris. Etc.
But gas leaf blowers are easily replaced by a much less neighbor-hostile alternative.
A month ago, I heard a lot of very loud jackhammer noises at 2AM. I got up and went out to investigate. A crew was jackhammering up the street. The foreman saw me and came by to apologize. The water main had broken and water was flooding the street. If they let it wait until morning, a lot of erosion damage would have been.
I told him I appreciate the crew coming out and fixing it right away.
If it is a blanket leaf blower ban, that is indeed asinine. However, I will gladly support a ban on two stroke engines for leaf blowers the same way I support requiring drivers to wear seatbelts.
> If it is a blanket leaf blower ban, that is indeed asinine.
Uh … okay, it isn't immediately obvious to me why that would be. My landlords insist on (literally) weekly leaf blowing, regardless of season, and so every Thursday the air outside the apartment is quite literally unbreathable, as it is slaked with dust and exhaust, and literally unbreathable inside if I were to open a window (i.e., living here, I have to remember to always close the windows prior to Thursday). Not to mention the sound.
Banning the gas ones fixes a portion of the problem, I suppose.
I don't think I'd care as much if the cadence was something reasonable, like monthly. One bad apple spoils the bunch.
There is no such thing as “random” enforcement. Laws built this way end up getting abused against minorities (racial/ethnic or political), the poor, or personal and political enemies.
Paying tax on a vehicle driven in a state is not unreasonable. And holding the executives of a shell/numbered/privately-held/tax-dodging organization liable for taxes owed is not draconian.
Our willingness as a society to tolerate the expense, danger, and health issues brought by extensive car use will be looked back on with bewilderment. You can start to see the insanity when a 'classic' car drives by. It's noisy, heavy, dangerous, and smelly. It's allowed to noticeably pollute any area it passes through. We've made progress, but that level of noise, danger, and pollution is how every car on your street used to be.
Car culture has a unique flavor of regressive entitlement. Every bit of societal and legislative progress that has made cars cleaner and safer has been fought tooth and nail by this group.
Our government created a vast, expensive, open to use resource in roads and infrastructure, offers minimal restrictions an licensing for its use, barely enforces existing safety laws, and the combustion crowd shows outrage at the loss of their illegal activities.
I wish our culture was less tolerant of this behavior. It is a tiny percentage that costs the rest of us constantly. Sometimes its a motorcycle club, others it just rich people shucking the social contract. I'm looking forward to the last Harley getting recycled.
I am not overfond of Harley noise; and I understand that some people really object to the VOC-smell of poorly-tuned carburetors...but this is a bit much.
There's artistic merit in historic industrial design & engineering, and keeping those things in an operational state; for which I am willing to tolerate the occasional puff of blue smoke.
Still is pretty pollutant. You just don't see the brake and wheel dust as much as the fumes coming out of the car dusting everything with lead like they used to.
>Car culture has a unique flavor of regressive entitlement. Every bit of societal and legislative progress that has made cars cleaner and safer has been fought tooth and nail by this group.
I'm a newcomer to this hobby, and am amazed how this resentment has perpetuated since their muscle cars were neutered in the 70's by emissions regulations. The resentment has transferred to subsequent generations who were not alive then, who still complain about all the emissions and efficiency efforts that carmakers undertake. Too much unnecessary machismo hanging around.
You might be young enough to not remember how much engine performance turned to suck after about '74, and stayed that way for 15 years. Those '70s changes were worthwhile, but the 90-10 rule absolutely applies here.
I am too young to have lived it, but I have read about the Malaise era. To me, it's just when American car manufacturers had to start competing globally, and couldn't, so kept making the same giant V8's, but with 160 hp.
The management was mostly of the opinion that gas prices would come down eventually, so there was little interest initially in making anything more efficient. Also, since small, efficient, cheap cars had miniscule or negative margins, there was a belief that competing in that market was optional.
No it isn't. Choices we make must consider externalities, tragedy of the commons, etc. Otherwise we're not bearing the full cost of and responsibility for our decisions.
I find walking with transit more freeing. You can just go anywhere, no dealing with parking nor worrying about a massive expensive vehicle. You don’t need to apply for a license and take classes before you can do it, and people of all ages can safely participate. No worrying about taking the same modality back either.
How many are you alleging me to have killed? Last time I checked, that was wrong no matter how you might do it. Do you struggle to avoid temptation when you have the means to kill and must choose not to?
This isn't about the state getting more money out of you. This is about shutting down on the tax dodge. Pay your taxes. If you don't like your taxes, vote to have them changed, but don't complain that you can't cheat your way out of the taxes that everyone else is paying.
> Pay your taxes. If you don't like your taxes, vote to have them changed, but don't complain that you can't cheat your way out of the taxes that everyone else is paying
Let's say there are two classes of software engineers: A and B.
- A get paid $50k/year
- B get paid double that.
The reason why A gets paid lower is because they are commodity software engineers. Due to supply and demand, there is an oversupply of these commodity engineers which make them so cheap. They are very hardworking but so are B.
B are very high quality, creative, high impact engineers. These are highly capable people and due to biology and how IQ is distributed, naturally their numbers are way limited than the class A. Due to their productivity, impact and supply, their market price is higher.
Given the same inputs, B produces way more useful and valuable (to society) outputs than A. Their incomes reflect this.
From a voting perspective, members of both A and B both have the same number of votes.
Now questions:
1. What are your thoughts if A passes laws and regulations where their class doesn't pay any taxes but B's pays 60%?
2. given that software engineering is an extremely creative process, problem solving ability typically scales with IQ, and IQ follows a bell distribution, the literal volume of A is much higher than B, aka laws that put B at a disadvantage get passed incredibly faster than the other way around (due to sheer volume in a democratic process).
Do these resonate with you? Are there any logical fallacies in these statements?
If so, what are your thoughts about them? What should class B do?
This isn't a logical fallacy quiz and shouldn't be presented as one.
Besides, it would be illogical--and unlikely--for Class A to tax Class B that much. If they did, and the predictable consequences followed, Class A would likely adjust the tax rate keep the population of Class B at an equilibrium state.
Let's stick to realistic what-if scenarios, shall we?
> Class A would likely adjust the tax rate keep the population of Class B at an equilibrium state
What would be Class A's motivation for keep the population of Class B at an equilibrium state?
> Let's stick to realistic what-if scenarios, shall we?
Prove to me then, that this is not how it happens right now or has happened for the last century.
Software engineers who make mid six figures and even 7 after bonuses and RSUs, working at high-frequency trading firms or the MAG 7 pay way more taxes than most of the typical Hacker News population does, and I would bet that population is faily well paid than the average random person.
That's a highly contrived scenario. In reality the rich guy who employs both A & B is using tax avoidance strategies (including registering their Ferrari 812 in Montana) to pay single digit tax on their actual net worth growth and debt taken out against it, while A & B pay 20-35% on their W2 income.
Have you just now discovered what a tax is? It's a means for residents to pay for the government of the state in which they live.
If someone doesn't like California's taxation (or government), they are free to move out of the state, but they can't have it both ways - they don't get to live in California but register assets outside the state to avoid the taxation.
Which seems like a reasonable way to go about it? If you’re in California and taking advantage of the benefits the state offers, you should be contributing towards it?
Yes, it is of course completely reasonable that California residents should be able to register their cars in Montana, where they don’t live. Why would the stat want to put a stop to things like that other than to squeeze their residents for more money?
According to Detwiler, Tennessee did not bother to notify him in advance that he was in violation. Instead, they sent heavily armed men to his place of business, handcuffed him, and took him to jail. His bond was $20000.
Detwiler spoke out publicly on his Youtube channel about the arrest, claiming that he was targeted specifically because his celebrity status would bring attention to Tennessee's position on the loophole. Shortly afterward, Detwiler was arrested a second time at the airport while returning from a trip abroad, and charged with a separate Montana loophole violation.
Detwiler says that Tennessee authorities visited his accountant months before he was charged, asked her specific information about his vehicles being registered in Montana, and told her not to let Detwiler know about they were investigating him.
Why should white collar crime deserve a lighter touch? This wasn't a no-knock raid in the middle of the night.
Why would they? The people who use these "loopholes" know exactly what they're doing.
The person in question was arrested and charged with tax evasion and filing a false sales tax return. What he is alleged to have done is illegal.
The state was under no obligation to alert him to the fact that they believed he had committed tax evasion and filing a false sales tax return before they arrested him and charged him with a crime.
What he seems to have expected was an opportunity to pay to settle a criminal charge before it landed him in cuffs. This I should be able to pay to make it go away attitude seems especially prevalent in American society today.
This Montana car registration scheme is, I believe, often referred to as "loophole" not because it's legal but because so many people have been able to get away with it without consequence that it is seen by many as relatively low-risk.
The tax evasion comes in when you fail to pay the use tax due and make false declarations or intentionally omit information when you make representations to the government (i.e. in tax filings).
The individual in question could have set up a Montana LLC, purchased a vehicle through it, paid the use tax due when he moved it to Tennessee and changed the registration within the 30 day limit.
Of course, there is no benefit of going out of your way to buy a car in Montana if you don't intend to drive it there, but the charges against this person relate to his failure to pay tax, not the mere fact that he set up an LLC.
If its just a monetary fine then there’s little reason to arrest somebody to immediately release them when you could’ve just told the accountant he needs to pay a fine or he’s going to be arrested.
It's akin to intentionally defrauding the state.
A quick Google search indicates that willful tax evasion is a Class E felony in Tennessee, with a potential prison term of 1-6 years.
Gregory v. Helvering, decided by the US Supreme Court in 1935.
Edit: So if it's a legal arrangement that reduces taxes, then yes, it's legal.
It works for the billionaire class, why shouldn’t it work for everyone else?
This is what’s ultimately going to kill what’s happening in the US today: when people in power decide that the rule of law is just a suggestion, they’re going to find that there are people willing to use that against them in ways that they’re not going to like.
As George Carlin said, "It's a big club...and you ain't in it!"
When it comes to financial crime, billionaires get benefits, plebs get prison.
But make it illegal first. Make sure it's a "loophole" as opposed to what it currently appears to be: a specifically crafted loophole that over half the Fortune 500 can fit through.
There is no "loophole".
It is perfectly legitimate for a company to be incorporated in Delaware and to register as a foreign corporation in other states where it has a presence/does business. You can pick any random Fortune 500 company and look up its registrations in the states where it does business.
This is not remotely similar to setting up a shell LLC in Montana, purchasing a vehicle through it in Montana to avoid sales tax in another state, registering it in Montana and then physically moving it to another state without changing the registration and paying the use tax as required by law in that state.
The crime here is not about setting up a Montana LLC. Nothing about the Montana LLC made this car tax evasion scheme even arguably legal.
For example, if I own a 2014 Nissan Versa and I register it in Colorado in January 2020 and then I need to move to Texas in August, I won't get Texas plates immediately when I get to Texas. I've "paid up" in Colorado for as long as my tags are good. I shouldn't have to get a Texas license plate until my existing one expires. However, I will eventually get Texas tags, just a few months too late.
Also I don't mind people going to Montana and buying luxury cars there if the cars actually stay in Montana. However, there should be scrutiny on these expensive toys more than regular cars we need to live because we don't have a decent transit story.
I feel like intent and magnitude should play a big role in legislation.
It may be legal, but it's rather more questionable if it's legitimate: the latter is a value statement in casual language, even if legal jargon would be more precise.
If I do business with people in all states of the USA*, there should not be any particular state which attracts a majority of big (and everything bigger than "small") business registrations: other than network effects (e.g. everyone else does it so the corporate lawyers are all right there), anything pushing so many businesses to choose one specific state, be that for taxation or for a court system that presumes more in favour of businesses than elsewhere, this creates an uneven playing field for other states and who gets what powers of enforcement for business (/consumer) laws they pass.
Like, people here argue the EU is "anti-business": well, the American-registered factories (Tesla) and American-owned IT company offices (Apple, Microsoft, Google, etc.) are still here, and the shares are publicly traded so even us Europeans can own them, but they count as "American" because of where they (/their parent companies) are registered. Even Google Deep Mind (HQ: London) gets called "American" due to the ownership structure.
* A similar argument applies to the EU
> this creates an uneven playing field for other states and who gets what powers of enforcement for business (/consumer) laws they pass.
Setting up your company in Delaware does not mean that you are exempt from the business and consumer protection laws in other states.
If you're a Delaware company and you violate consumer protection laws in California, violate environmental protection laws in Colorado, defraud investors in Maryland, etc., the relevant authorities/powers in those states will all be able to exercise jurisdiction over you.
Being incorporated in Delaware does not mean you have free reign to do whatever you want in any other state and have disputes over your actions adjudicated in Delaware.
If you have a Delaware corporation doing business in, say, California, and you refuse to register as a foreign corporation in California and follow the laws applicable to businesses in California, that is a different matter.
The Delaware corporation is perfectly legal; the failing to follow California's laws when your company is doing business there isn't.
Over half the Fortune 500 is incorporated in Delaware. Countless private companies are incorporated in Delaware and other states, with their owners properly registering as foreign corporations and paying applicable taxes and fees in second states where they do business.
The person in question wasn't arrested for buying and registering a car in Montana. He was arrested for not paying the tax he owed on it under Tennessee law after he brought it into Tennessee. The law there states that sales or use tax is owed on a vehicle if the vehicle is primarily housed and operated in the state.
Under Tennessee law, you are also required to change an out-of-state vehicle's registration to Tennessee if it's brought into the state and operated there for more than 30 days.
So, in summary, you can buy a car in Montana and pay no sales tax and it's not a crime. It becomes a crime when you use the Montana purchase to evade paying taxes in another state where you actually use and house the car.
A) They can be used relatively easily (compared to other states) as shell companies because you do not have to identify yourself publicly when minting the company. B) The legal process corporations can choose to go through in Delaware are extremely advantageous to corporations (look up The Court of Chancery)
But it's not clear what use case you have in mind, and I think your comment deserves some qualification:
1. Even if disclosure of your name and personal details isn't required to set up a Delaware LLC, almost everyone is going to be identified anyway: through the registered agent, the EIN you obtain from the IRS, your bank. Sure, if you have a team of lawyers and layers of layers of shell companies across multiple jurisdictions, it's trivially easy to keep your ownership pretty effectively hidden but the minute you have any assets in or moving through the US, it's trivially easy for the authorities to figure out who you are once they have a reason to.
2. The legal "advantages" of Delaware basically aren't relevant to single-member/closely-held companies because you're not going to have any disputes with yourself over the corporate structure. If your Delaware entity is doing business in other states, you are exposed to the laws of those states as far as your business operations are concerned.
Does that mean a race to the bottom? Yes.
Bit dont worry, the real bottom is when they would actually start bidding against each other with tax incentives. Oh wait...
Why do you believe that?
And yes, the legal process is advantageous in DE because the courts have a massive body of prior law. Decisions are made quickly. It doesn’t mean the courts routinely rule for corporations.
If you're an American company selling your stuff to German users, are you doing business in Germany? What if you don't have a German translation of your site, don't accept Germany-specific payment methods and don't advertise in Germany-specific channels, but still ship there? What if your products are delivered electronically, and you don't apply any IP blocks? What if you IP block Germany, but don't block VPN use? What if you do block VPN use, but still process personal data of German citizens (even without giving them access to your systems)? What if you do everything in your power to stop German users from using your site, but the site is free and VPN detection isn't 100% reliable, so some users do slip through?
Just to be clear, there are no good answers here, and the law (and international law in particular) is wholly unprepared for the realities of the internet.
Shipping there demonstrates willingness, that is the sales contract (shipping to the customer address), advertising or localisation don't matter since those aren't a "contract" but the final sale with shipment is. It's quite clear-cut.
> What if you do everything in your power to stop German users from using your site, but the site is free and VPN detection isn't 100% reliable, so some users do slip through?
If you can demonstrate that you had active safeguards to not allow someone in Germany to use your product, and these users had to find workarounds to access it, you are protected.
There are good answers: if you willingly delivery a service or a product to a resident of a country you are subject to its laws.
The law in most countries, including Germany, is very clear: if you're going to sell your products or services to individuals and businesses in those countries, you become subject to the laws applicable to that type of transaction in those countries.
If you don't want to be subject to German law, don't sell products or services to people in Germany.
Yes, and the VAT must be paid. You'd need to have some EU member state registration to do so (and still pay the correct VAT-rate, it's different per country). If it's business-to-business it'd be somewhat different.
>but still ship there
The local folks will have to customs-clear it themselves, pay the import tax AND the VAT. It's doable but very consumer unfriendly and likely won't be doing much business at all.
With the regards to topic - the tax is still very much paid.
If that's not the reddest of red flags, I don't know what is.
It is, however, off-topic for this thread.
But I was also never a fan of using one problem to justify not going after another. We ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Someone who does not pay their taxes, be it a legal or illegal loophole, does not pay their fair share within the society they live in. It is not us people against the state, it is us people who are the state.
If doing something isn't legal, then it's not a loophole. It's just something that someone thought they could get away with if the government didn't notice.
Sounds like this was never legal in Tennessee; calling it a "loophole" isn't correct.
You cannot reasonably create a law that covers all situations in their entirety. Even if you could, it would become obsolete the second it's in effect
The world isn't simple and absolute, and the law isn't a computer program.
Both hits are the same, resulting damage/death same. Law differentiates on (proven or disproven) intent and resulting sentencing difference may be huge. Or at least should be. World and people are unfortunately anything but simple generic use cases.
Million other cases proving there are good reasons to take intent into account, even if surface for mistreatment is not small. Unjustice otherwise would be bigger IMHO.
Government doesn't just give up power like that. And they sure don't give it up over the kicking and screaming of the myriad of industries that benefit as middle men and over the kicking and screaming of the "there ought to be a law" class of useful idiots that exist for every exist of policy.
You can get married in multiple states - though some states may share, most don't share marriage registration. Nothing will stop you. But you're still breaking the law of bigamy.
The law permits the behaviour, don’t like it? Change it.
The problem is that this was hard to enforce, so now they have changed the law to something much simpler: if any corporate officer or beneficial owner is a resident of California, then the business is subject to Californian taxation.
I wonder if the Montana plates 'loophole' would be as well 'exploited' had it not been for the fictional world of YouTube.
... and she complied. Looks like he chose his accountant poorly.
If she was doing it for him, she was likely doing it for others and thus it was in her best interests to stay silent for one to protect the revenue stream from the others.
Yeah that's the American spirit right there
I wish you could just register under an LLC or trust or something wherever and have a generic plate that can go anywhere and force the states to agree on a set of standards that apply across the country.
Alternatively allow people to keep their plates indefinitely like phone numbers. Yes, this creates arbitrage opportunities but maybe we should be bringing up the standards of the arbitrage states instead of having assholes threaten everyone with guns for random infractions.
I'm kinda just throwing ideas out there but this current system is Kafkaesque.
Functionally, that's what already exists - the standards are dimensions and readability. There's no CA smog inspection station as you enter the state, this is about people abusing a loophole. I spent all 4 years of college in CA with a CA driver's license, a car with out of state plates, and zero Kafkaesque issues. Maybe tax avoidance loopholes are Kafkaesque because they're not how anyone is supposed to do things.
As one more wacky way to do it, some countries rivet the license plate to the car because the plates never change. They're basically shorthand for the VIN, so the owner and their place of residence don't matter, only where the car was first registered.
The administration has gradually modernized so that all the legal requirements of tax/registration/insurance can be checked online.
However, there's a loophole that's apparently becoming popular: "ghost plates". Number plates aren't a secure document. They have no authenticity markers. So you can just.. print your own, slap them on, and you're very unlikely to get police attention. A subset of that is plates which are IR scattering so they don't show up on speed cameras.
Only these are "ghost plates". So called because the letters appear faint, or ghost like, on ANPR cameras.
Using illegal plates, either ghost ones or cloned ones (where they're real plates but for the wrong vehicle) are not loopholes, any more than breaking into someone's house and stealing their stuff is a "loophole" for property ownership.
We don't call fake IDs either a loophole or "ghost IDs". When presented as identity documents, they're fraudulent identity documents. It doesn't matter if that ID is being presented to a bouncer in order to get in to a bar, or to everyone who cares to look at your car's bumper while it drives down the motorway, it's still a fake ID.
Pretty sure that's illegal, no? You have 30 days after bringing a car into the state to register it with the CA DMV.
Complexity is a cost of our federal system and I am okay paying it in most cases.
The same one that needed me to show them the smog sticker to show that I didn't need to do a smog check ... for my out-of-state Model 3
https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2026/2024-sta...
That said, I've moved across state lines before and didn't find it that inconvenient. I just had to re-register and do a smog check.
In my experience there's enough slack in practice for these edge cases. At least in CA, it's very strange for a cop to cite a tourist because their car is not road legal in CA but is road legal in their home state. I've known many people who just get off with warnings, sometimes years after they've actually moved to CA (and just never bothered re-registering their car their, even though that's technically legally required). Ofc YMMV
They do still have to comply with local laws, which makes sense. Just because you have Florida plates does not mean you don’t need all weather tires in Minnesota.
For example: The tint that Florida law allows is way, way darker than what Ohio law allows.
But the Ohio Revised Code has carveouts that make it perfectly legal for Florida Man to drive his darker-tinted Florida-registered car in Ohio.
If you go by the spirit of the law, then a grace period would be reasonable to apply to infrequent visitors. However, you travel there daily, so that does not apply to you.
Doesn’t really seem like you have a leg to stand on here.
Idk about the rest of the country, but in my experience in the southern US it's a pretty common tactic to pull you over for assumed illegal tint to try and catch you for other charges. Especially if you aren't white.
If your argument for this law is that it forces people to incriminate themselves, that's really an argument that the whole thing should be thrown out.
Under no circumstances should you be able to be compelled to assist in your own prosecution, either directly or indirectly.
That law has nothing to do with incriminating yourself (it's more about safety), but even if the law was specifically "so someone can see into your window and identify you if you do something bad", that's still not self-incrimination. Self-incrimination is requiring someone to testify against themselves.
Your position boils down to: "I should be able to commit traffic violations anonymously because anything else is an infringement on my 5th amendment rights".
Basically you're saying that any law is invalid if it makes or ensures that any kind of wrongdoing visible to witnesses. That's absurd.
There are all sorts of laws that apply in one place but not others. Why do you think tint or vehicles should get special treatment?
If I buy legal weed in Colorado and take it into Utah, it doesn’t matter that I’m not an Utah resident, and that the weed is legal where I bought it.
The US Supreme Court recognizes a general principle that you can transit a State with things that are illegal in that State. An individual State cannot impose a de facto ban on commerce between States, which includes the right to transport goods through a State in the normal fashion regardless of the laws of that State.
Except no one would buy it, not even Carmax or any of the other "cash for cars" places! Turns out, the car was originally manufactured for Canada, and California doesn't recognize the Canadian smog regulations, even if the car was functionally identical down to the catalytic converter. No one would take the damn thing because they couldn't re-title it. I finally found one guy who would who seemed like he was taking a decent sized risk, but since I gave him a good price he decided he'd just give it his best shot. For all I know he may have had to (illegally) drive it to Nevada just to sell it.
https://www.estartcoalition.org/
I suspect eSTART is... a start to what you're looking for.
So many Californians live in valleys that trap pollution. Strict emissions regulations have an immediate, tangible impact. South Carolina doesn’t have the same local issues and their standards vary. Likewise, tint stuff is mostly a police / safety issue, and is more of a problem in major metro areas. High tint is an issue in the Bronx. Not so much in rural Alabama.
I’d argue that the worst part of the system we have now is that we have a weird hybrid as disenfranchisement has become a political priority. Integration between states is driven by compacts between states and Canadian provinces and mediated through private entities like AAMVA and NLETS. That has facilitated other sharing agreements with insurers and other entities that is a serious and significant privacy violation.
We should be able to get a free passport card for identity, and make driving privilege licensure, vehicle registration, etc a purely state matter.
There's a reason there are 50 states and not just one federal land. The needs of the people of Montana are definitely different than the needs of New Yorkers, so expecting the two states to have the same laws is just illogical. It's also why things like the electoral college is a thing to prevent the population centers dictating what the rural people have to do.
Plenty of other countries with rural areas seem to do fine without one. They also usually have much better / more granular representation, instead of a hard cap of 435 for a population that is orders of magnitude larger than at the country’s founding.
I wear a cheap disposable N95 mask when I walk along busy streets, which filters out probably at least 98% of the particulates. (The "95" in "N95" stands for 95%, but that is 95% of the particles that are hardest to filter: both smaller particles and larger particles are easier to filter. So since it is quite unlikely that all or most of the particles produced by brakes and tires are precisely the size that is hardest to filter, I estimate that my cheap $2 mask that can be reused for dozens walks is probably filtering at least 98%.)
In contrast noise pollution and tailpipe pollution (mostly gases) and fuel-tank-evaporation pollution (all gases) are much harder to filter (at least for pedestrians on the move) so a drastic reduction in one and a complete elimination of the other two is an extremely welcome development.
Specifically, the gaseous pollution from tailpipes and fuel tanks consists of many different compounds, many of which can be effectively absorbed by filtration media, but many of which cannot be. I don't bother to try to filter it out when I walk along busy streets because the filtration media makes the mask much bulkier and heavier than my N95 masks are and because the filtration media costs more (even plain activated carbon, the cheapest and most useful media for gases) and remains effective for a much shorter duration before it must be replaced.
You lost me in the next paragraph where your solution was to centralize even more into a committee that has the power to bulldoze over more locally relevant needs and desires
this is a very local need of some people. they are a minority, and they want some accomodations.
What if gun owners had to walk around wearing a huge plate with their gun registration number when they wanted to carry a gun?
And why do driver’s licenses have all sorts of extraneous info (all you need is a biometric, like a photo, expiration date, class of license, and any restrictions)? Just because I walked into a bar or bought a beer at the supermarket doesn’t mean they should be allowed to harvest my address, DOB etc.
The whole edifice is absurd.
I'm all for privacy for things that are truly private. But wanting to secretly consume public resources and remain unaccountable for harm to others is what I think is truly absurd. Although it's an increasingly popular one recently.
People who claim they want privacy while acting in society instead want something else, usually a lack of accountability.
https://taxfoundation.org/data/all/state/state-road-taxes-fu...
And nobody said anything about wanting to be unaccountable for harm. Rather it's a matter of being vulnerable to ne'er do wells. When we get a US GDPR equivalent with teeth, develop a widespread societal taboo against the surveillance industries, and so on, then we can talk about an equitable tradeoff with accountability for harm. Until then, the dynamic is an overwhelming vulnerability.
As is dramatizing license plates as "overwhelming vulnerability". Just look at the US's 40k traffic deaths per year, with countless lesser injuries and accidents. Balanced against which specific harms of license plates?
The problem with Flock, etc, is their massive, unaccountable, for profit surveillance, which uses much more than license plates, and is working hard to move beyond them.
The specific harms are exemplified by things like Flock, but also individual businesses tracking, private investigators, etc. If you want to stop that harm other ways, I've already agreed that I would find that acceptable. But until something actually changes on that front, it's not really an argument!
Given modern technology, we can imagine different ways that would provide less of a general vulnerability while actually providing more of the accountability you're putting foremost. Imagine say e-ink plates or a radio beacon that rotated the broadcasted identifier every minute, only being linkable through a database with an audit trail, etc.
You have zero right to a car. It is a privilege, one that you should be able to lose a lot easier.
> You have zero right to a car. It is a privilege, one that you should be able to lose a lot easier.
Do I have a right to feed myself and my family?
If yes, is that right absolute or relative?
If absolute, and my ability to feed requires me to commute in a car, is having a car a right or a privilege?
Next, assume I cannot use my legs and need an electric wheelchair to move around. Do I have a right to an electric wheelchair? What if that electric wheelchair has 50 miles of range which is more than sufficient for my daily commute and more.
Am I now at an advantage compared to a person who needs a car for that exact same commute?
No matter what other thought experiment you create, you do not have a right to drive a car in the US, it can be revoked quite easily.
But hey, I'm sure you're the first to vote against any measures that would actually improve things like urban density or public transportation.
To the contrary.
I don't believe in being punitive and taxing people who live a life different from mine or hold conflicting beliefs.
I don't believe in lecturing people on how they should live their lives as long as they don't start to lecture me on how I should mine.
If someone wants to live in a rural county and drive to and from work or groceries 20 hours a day, they're welcome to. They are adults.
If someone on the other hand wants to live right next to the train and bus station, so they can take a ride right out of their balcony, they're welcome to do so as well. They are adults.
I do not assume a right over another person's decision and freedom to choose how they want to live their own life as long as they don't tamper with my own. We are adults.
The United States was built on these very ideals: mini, hyper-localized governance than a larger centralized governance that is not in touch with the people they govern.
Unfortunately, that philosophy has been lost to time, and people in coastal cities in California seem to feel perfectly comfortable lecturing ranch hands in Montana what to do and how to live their lives.
That's a common tale of American mythos, but it's not really an accurate portrayal of American history. Hyper-local governance only really existed in New England and never spread outside of it. Most governance centered on states which are--let's be frank--small countries: the median state in population and area is around 40th percentile among world countries, so smaller than average, but not by that much. And if you look throughout the history of states' rights in US history, invariably those advocating for states' rights are bleeding hypocrites. Note that, e.g., when the southern states established the Confederate States of America, they expressly forbid their own states from having the rights they were claiming for themselves in the antebellum period.
Indeed, in many cases, the more localized governance really turns out to just be people who have lost the political debate at the national level, and thus unable to impose their views on everybody, settling for imposing them at the state level and eagerly oppressing those within the jurisdictions where they can win from exercising their differing views.
lol, you were then eaten by a bear of your own making.
You see, when you're deathmobile is f=mv2 down the highway you present a clear and present danger to every one around you. It doesn't matter if your 5, 55 or 95 physics gives zero shits about your libertarian ideas as your broke ass kills 3 people and leaves one a quadriplegic requiring millions of dollars in care for the rest of their miserable life.
>Unfortunately, that philosophy has been lost to time
Yea, guess what happens when you connect the world together so were milliseconds away digitally, and 3 days away from each other with modern travel. Suddenly the dumb shit we do effects everyone around us and in our profound ignorance make the world worse for everyone around us. Hyper-localized doesn't exist unless you want to dump all telecommunications in the trash and burn all the cars and planes the go back to horses.
You act like the founding fathers, if transported to today, would be completely incapable of making logically informed decisions based on the current state of the world, and not a world 250 years in their past.
> and people in coastal cities in California seem to feel perfectly comfortable lecturing ranch hands in Montana
And the people in Montana are perfectly fine with making laws at the federal level that effect people in California.
The rural folk in Wyoming and Montana get far more say relative to their populace on how Californians should live than vice versa.
It's not urban versus rural. That... is just another variation of having more vote proportional to your land. Land doesn't vote, people do. But in the US, land also votes some, which seems ironic given a nation founded in part on getting away from rights largely embued by how much land you own.
A single bumper sticker or distinctive paint color or a dent in the door can be just as immediately identifying as a license plate at that level. Even in places where the plate is always the same for the car and doesn't change when it's sold, it's just a way to tell one vehicle apart from another.
Case in point, my user name is a license plate number of a total stranger, and I imagine you'd be hard pressed to even tell me the color of the car, let alone their name and address. I'm not asking you to doxx someone, but saying it's not trivially easy for the average person, even when considering the boatload of data broker information out there on every individual.
I think the only reason we enforce showing the plates is so the police can easily see if a vehicle is allowed to be on the roads from their own vehicles during traffic stops. We don't have police out patrolling for gun owners, but if we did I bet we would see more public "gun registration plates" for convenience purposes.
As for drivers licenses at bars, again, it's just convenience. We could split all that info into separate little cards and only show what we need to, but we've collectively decided the risk is very low that a bar or supermarket is going to track our address and DOB as we flash them to buy booze.
That's not "low risk"; that actually happens, a lot. Many bars and supermarkets will scan the barcode on the back of your license when they do the check. Of course everything on it goes into a database to help build a profile about you.
That would be fantastic. Wish we could implement that.
Actually a very sensible proposition.
Do you wear a name tag in public with your SSN, or some unique identifying information on it? If not, why not?
If I asked you to vote on this, would you vote in favor for it?
Why not? People can strangle other people so it makes sense to know who is who at all times in the case that someone strangles someone else and then tries to run away.
If this isn't making sense yet - This is as sensible as expecting software engineers to walk around with equipment that prominently display uniquely identifying information because computers can be used to hack and doxx people.
The fact that license plates were/are necessary is to address shortcomings of technology.
Most states in 2026 are slowly removing the need to display license plates at all because it never made sense but had to be done to address shortcomings that are no longer so in 2026.
Do you have a reference? I have not read this, and California is going the opposite way.
That's just the US being stupid and using driver's licenses as primary identity documents. (And if you don't have a passport or other ID document, you're part of that problem.)
(Fun fact: I have 2 passports, 1 driver's license and 1 residence permit. None of those have my address. To be fair, they all have my DOB, that's really considered mandatory for any ID document around here.)
The requirement to identify the vehicle for enforcement of the licensing requirements is not at all strange.
Don't get a license if you don't agree with the requirements for it. Would you be saying the same thing for aircraft?
It's the qualitative change than comes with the change in quantity and ease of monitoring (and accessibility of that info) that means being identifiable is so much worse now days.
Tell that to felons. Or people with diagnosed mental health issues of certain types.
The idea of a "right" is hilarious. Whenever you have an entity (like a government) that has the power of force or imprisonment over you, everything is a privilege.
I can't think of very many "rights" that haven't been abridged, curtailed, or violated by governments in ways that have been held to be legal when reviewed by courts.
I think as programmers we naturally want a single, universal standard for everything, but there are genuine advantages to having the current system as well, even with all of its flaws.
There are entities that are federal registrations (eg: an aircraft with an "N-number" -- that N-number is federal) that individual states still try really hard to tax the same way as cars/trucks. Individual counties even take a stab at this.
It seems that the rules might be there for some benefit but mostly the rules help the state/county make income.
To rephrase, you're asking that the same license plate work across all of the European Union.
To realize why this is unrealistic, one has to go back to history and understand the core concept of the United States of America. It's right there in the name itself. It was a compromise to unite and bring agreement across all these disparate states that were in their very own right entire countries (and most, even till date, most states in the US continue to be larger, geographically than most countries in the world), agree on some very basic terms so there could be trade across them, kind of like the European Union.
> but this current system is Kafkaesque
Of course, this license plate registration thing was optimized for tax and fee collection, and it does that job very well. All it takes is for someone to run for office and say they're going to overturn it all.
It would be nice though, if you could just buy a car across the border and drive it home. I doubt the EU will ever be that integrated.
No. Each state needs the power to set minimum standards as to who can drive what. I don't want to see millionaires be allowed to drive around without insurance in unsafe cars simply because their daddy purchased them a share in a Delaware family-held plates LLC.
also the new hot thing in california is to have dealer plates on your million dollar car. you never register it, never pay taxes, but it’s still legal to drive. you just need to own a dealership, but on paper again that’s not hard if you’re rich
https://www.californiadealeracademy.com/articles/the-importa...
You're technically correct, but a dealership is one of the most highly taxed entities in California. In any city or county, a dealership, dollar for dollar, pays one of the highest taxes than any business there.
So this recommendation is similar to stabbing yourself in the stomach and waiting to bleed out so that you weigh less on the scale - there are other details, most people don't care about, with those dealer plates on one's million dollar car that has to do more with insurance, liability and taxes than fees to the CA DMV.
> someone actually has to pull over the montana plate owner, then the state has to sue them for tax evasion, build the case, etc. Thats just not gonna happen
But that's because that's not the path the FTB follows!
The reasonable path that has been taken is the FTB finds out that you, as a Californian, own plates in Montana and send you a bill for the registration plus fees and punitive damages so you reconsider pulling the stunt again. If you don't respond in 90 days, it's sent directly to your bank as a demand letter. If you have at least one bank that has a California domicile, that bank is going to pay out from your funds immediately.
That's true for most dealerships, but most of the taxes are transaction based (probably some for property tax on inventory though). If you have a sham dealership that primarily exists so you can have dealer plates and to massage transactions on your personal vehicles, you can probably avoid a lot of taxes.
Not my style, I just left the state when I was tired of everything. I'm happier where I landed, but if people want to live in California and use out of state plates, that's less people where I am, so go nuts.
Most dealerships in the last three decades have not owned their own inventory for a long time. Trade-ins are held by dealerships in a manner very different than just "owning" them outright. These are all financed, leveraged deals.
> If you have a sham dealership that primarily exists so you can have dealer plates and to massage transactions on your personal vehicles, you can probably avoid a lot of taxes
I would imagine you have not worked at a dealership or don't own one, so let's not continue this discussion further because you are severely underestimating what it costs in California (both in time and money) to be a dealer.
> I'm happier where I landed, but if people want to live in California and use out of state plates, that's less people where I am, so go nuts
It's actually great to talk to a transplant because most of my relatives and friends have moved to other states, whereas I've stood steadfast.
Are you happy where you are? What made you be in California? Did you grow up here? Was it for work?
Would you come back if California was split into two, where one part of California was closer politically or regulatory to Texas or Florida?
Fair, but I can't imagine it takes that much time if you don't actually do any transactions or hold any inventory, except for the transactions around the cars you want to drive. I don't know what it costs to be a licensed car dealer that doesn't actually do any transactions, but for a lot of people, it's not really about the money, it's about exploiting loopholes so you can pay something else instead of sales tax on your fancy car.
I was born in Southern California. I went to Milwaukee for college, then came back and got a job in sillycon valley. I'm not going back (except to visit), it's too crowded and I don't like people. Especially in places with weather I like. For roughly twice the price of my small house on a postage stamp lot, I'm on 8 acres with a house that's too big... I did well in the startup lottery, but I can't afford to go to an open house for 8 acres anywhere in California that I'd choose to live.
Caveat: ifn my kiddo establishes himself in California and has kids and would like us closer, we'd probably consider it. He's in high school right now, so that's some time from now. We will want to downsize to a smaller house by then (although probably still don't want to be close to neighbors)
but it's only worth the effort if you are rich enough to buy cars that incur substantial tax and reg fees. you still need to have insurance and the dealership kind of insurance costs a lot. you probably aren't going to get umbrella coverage to include it either, so you'll have more limited liability.
An estimated 60,000 motorists — mostly in and around Naples — have been enticed by the promise of 70 per cent savings on road tax and insurance fees to transfer ownership of their vehicles to shell companies in Poland and register the vehicles there, according to an industry group.
Now with Italy’s general election looming, Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing coalition has announced “the elimination” of the unpopular annual road tax that helped spawn the evasion schemes. The bollo auto will be cut for an estimated 14.5mn small and midsized vehicles — a giveaway that will cost Italy’s already strained public coffers an estimated €2.4bn in lost revenue next year” [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/74e70f0c-3788-4343-93d7-9c8740ee2...
The first crackdown was also before the pandemic and being Polish and in-and-out of Italy I fully expected to get caught in the crossfire, but that never happened.
Apparently I was driving too much like a tourist - indicators and all.
That being said a few people from the local Polish community got into trouble, but it always first due to driving into a Zona a Traffico Limitato with a car that shouldn't be there - plates notwithstanding.
Luckily the loop hole is being closed by the Polish authorities after it became popular.
That's a crazy amount of money for a third-party liability insurance.. It looks like insurance cartels are having a field day..
The law could benefit from a "content crime", similar to a "hate crime". If you break the law, for the purpose of creating content, you get fucked in the ass. That would have worked for Whistlin'. "You voilated TN tax law, while being an internet clown".
Living in an east coast metro area, owning a 20yo car that doesn't pass smog and needs a lot of work to get there is a thorn in my side. So I've got a car I can't register and slowly fix on weekend. It'd prefer an additional tax on my registration for not passing smog, rather than not be able to register it and the car be rendered illegal.
Scheiner specifically emphasized that the interstate registration system avoids requiring a vehicle to pay more than one full registration fee.
Why do you think they made this new law? It gets them to what they actually want, which is collecting tax.
Thats primary school level of math that in 2026 would be trivial yo implement, if fairness is the goal. We have such thing in Switzerland, you dont pay flat yearly fees/taxes/insurances if you register your car in december for example
Re: the pro-rate for a December registration, in California at least, registrations are renewed on the date you first registered, not based on the calendar year, so there's no need for a pro-ration.
Hmm... maybe I should start a car dealer just to avoid taxes on my next car..
The Montana plate for owners reminds of registering your boat in Wilmington Delaware to avoid state sales tax. You had to create an LLC to do this I think.
Coming from $300/yr colorado insurance its a steal
I'm full time in a camper right now so this entire conversation is extra fun because I don't have a physical address anywhere which is a whole other ball of worms just insuring and registering my truck.
It's... ridiculous.
As I understand, a fairly large number of people register cars in Montana while never living in the state.
Edit: Just to add, maybe the scenario you described should be cracked down on, but it feels like less purposeful avoiding/evading a tax. My opinion is that could come afterwards, with more warning given to people.
The article calls the ownership entities "fake LLCs". They were in fact completely real kosher Montana LLCs. The issue at hand is that CA wants to disallow the case where the LLC is owned by someone who is a CA resident. That's not the same as "fake".
Finally, anyone from California should experience the Montana DMV (called MDT here). It's like checking into the Four Seasons compared to the CA DMV! You can phone them and they'll answer within a few rings and help you out. You can go down to their office at the court house and perhaps have to wait in line for 5 minutes, but perhaps just walk straight up to the counter. They will help you figure out vanity plate letters, endlessly checking whether ideas you have are already registered. I almost make up excuses to go to the DMV, it's so nice there. Montana also has a system of sponsored plates. There are about 100 of them, which allows you to choose a plate of almost any color, which is nice if you want it to match the car color.
[1] Why do that? Well there are 100X more cars for sale in CA, and the prices are lower.
On what? Genuinely curious what class of vehicle you’re buying and selling. I’m assuming it’s…not Camrys.
Also, please consider this is just for registering the vehicle, gas taxes actually pay for road use.
No, a significant chunk comes from the general fund and the federal government.
This is one of those functions best handled at a national level and dispersed proportionally back to the states based on population relative to total registrations. It doesn’t have to mean the end of local or vanity plates (those could still persist with local DMVs functioning as federal tax collecting agents), but moving to a national or international scheme makes increasing sense.
The real loophole for normal people is that CA outsources smog checks, there are facebook groups advertising that they will pass your car -- the one without catalytic converters, for example. California is this interesting blend of lawlessness and rule-following, high taxes but also tons of absurdly low taxes (think Prop 13).
so everyone should just pretend that they’re paying sky high taxes and let the broken tax sheltering strategies land poorer people in prison and never talk about the effective ones to anyone except your lawyer
> If anyone running the business is a California resident (by the updated definition outlined above), then the whole business is a California resident, and any assets (including Lamborghinis and Bugattis) held in the state are subject to California taxation.
I mean, we can continue to pick apart the legal language, or we can acknowledge that if people invent elaborate loopholes to avoid paying taxes, the State will adapt and create elaborate corrections to collect those taxes. This is just a cat and mouse game of greed vs. fairness being played out in real-time.
It's due to the asinine carb laws. Even if you have a car that would pass smog, they won't let you register it. I don't see this doing anything when a ton of vehicles get a pass. For instance, all motorcycles don't fall under this rule and they are the biggest polluters out there.
It's just dumb.
All these complaints people have about cars - yet don't see any legislation out there that's bringing the clean energy public transit revolution. Just more rules without any relief.
Yeah this is kind of explicitly what most people living there seem to want
i doubt there's all that many beneficial owners of montana businesses that live in california, but surely there are many nevadans and oregonians that straddle the border and will get unfairly caught up in this.
The California DMV is a fees collection arm and not customer friendly. For example, a lot of Californians don't even know that there is something called PNO, or "planned non-operation", a status possible for vehicles they don't plan to run or use on public streets, where they stop paying recurring registration fees that are now in the hundreds of dollars a year.
Every year, I'm aware of at least a few people who do not have an operational car or have a second car in their garage that they are still paying registration fees for, or the state of California places a lien on their unused vehicle, just because that person is unaware that they can just stop paying registration fees on their car by filing a PNO in time.
First you have to know this PNO status exists, and then you have to file it correctly within a short 90 day window. There are no exceptions, even if you prove you were in a coma or out of state or country. I'm not going to go into the details of how draconian the process of bringing a car out of PNO is. For example, if you have a car that has passed smog in October, you put a PNO in October and you bring it back out of PNO in November, they're going to make you smog it nonetheless - pretty expensive process that costs now atleast a hundred dollars all in, which runs counter to California's own policy of not requiring a smog within 90 days of the recent smog test.
If the DMV was customer empathetic and friendly, they would have by default, placed any cars that have not been registered in time, on PNO. Later, the person who pays the registration then automatically gets their car moved from PNO to registered status.
However, this is not how the DMV operates: They will continue to tax you and fine you and add interest on top of all the fees for a car you do not plan to operate.
So all the debate about whether this is right or if there is another way of doing it etc is missing the entire point because none of that is the objective.
The entire point is to collect taxes and fees to fund a ballooning, unchecked and ever-growing expense account.
If we agree that owning a car for most people (I'm sure there are exceptions for collectors etc, that don't concern me) requires either paying registration or the PNO, why is not the PNO automatic choice until someone pays the registration?
That way, any car not registered is already on PNO and the owner has to do nothing. What's wrong with that?
Why is PNO not retroactive? Why is its active window only a short 90 days?
Cops can still pull over an late/unregistered car and ticket it. CA civil code authorizes the towing of any car that's due registration at the owner's expense, so why these additional restrictions?
> so doing it automatically would still result in an unpaid bill
I would imagine a $20 bill would be appreciated by most people over a $200 one.
A 20% late fee on a $20 bill is still lower than on $200.
And regardless, the default is not PNO because not-PNO is the default. The vast majority of people will be driving on public roads and won't be eligible for PNO.
And the problem with that is that at some point people just vote with their money, their feet and the future wealth they're going to create and GTFO to greener pastures.
There is such a ting as diminishing returns on insane taxation. France is an example. But billionaires leaving California is a thing too.
I did personally decided my native country gave me jack shit in return for my taxes: the only thing it'd give me would be ever more public servants collecting ever more taxes, all the while driving my native city (Brussels / Belgium) into the ground.
So I packed my stuff and left for a country with less taxes and which is, IMO, better managed and where you don't feel like the state's only mission is to turn you into someone poor by seizing all your wealth.
The people who relocate to avoid taxes are upper-middle class people who are overextended on their finances.
...While 99% of road damage is being done by out-of-state semi trucks exempt from CA registration.
Many people don't relocate, but instead try to figure out a way to save a bunch of money on a large purchase - why pay more if it can be avoided?
> Many people don't relocate, but instead try to figure out a way to save a bunch of money on a large purchase - why pay more if it can be avoided?
There isn’t one, nor was there ever. You always had to pay CA sales tax on cars that were primarily used in CA. The only thing the Montana plate ever did was to make it easier to plausibly lie to cops when you get pulled over… not the kind of shit a wealthy person’s accountant is recommending
The majority of people who did the Montana “loophole” in California were always overextended yahoos trying to save 40k to look richer than they are. It was always illegal to do in CA.
The tax evaders who are being targeted here aren’t wealthy people, they’re people who couldn’t afford the tax bill on their financed Lambo because they need that money for the gap insurance.
Good! I do not understand why people think this is a bad thing. I would rather be surrounded by poor, kind people than these rich sociopaths.
Funny, that.
Now comments like this, defending losers with lambos, are seen as admirable.
By what definition is someone with things you don't have a "loser"?
I don't know where you heard this, but it is not true. HN is filled with people with many opinions about the rich, and also many rich people, and has always been.
Startup News, created by a founder of the venture capital incubator Y Combinator, did not ever uniformly hate the rich. It is sponsored by the extremely rich, and only exists because they wished it into existence and maintain it.
Is dumb.
You want comprehensive enforcement with reasonable penalities.
You don't want draconian laws randomly enforced.
Details are important and very hard to get right.
As long as nothing about this crosses state lines (ie they’re not trying to regulate out of state businesses or property) there’s not a lot to go on. Several states have taken similar steps to close this loophole. Famously the YouTuber whistlindiesel got arrested in Tennessee for this and the case is still pending
https://www.thedrive.com/news/is-the-government-making-an-ex...
I'm relying on the paraphrasing in article rather than the text of the law itself, but this says that it only applies to assets held in the state.
Did you even read what was written?
(surprised pikachu face)
The ban is useless because the only way to enforce it is to catch it in the act (in my town). Basically impossible. So it is a ban that could be enforced (other ways) but instead is just a suggestion - and not one that most people follow because there are almost no repercussions.
- Pollution
- Noise
Regardless of the source. If someone comes up with a magic silent gas leaf blower which doesn't pollute, that's okay.
But gas leaf blowers are easily replaced by a much less neighbor-hostile alternative.
I told him I appreciate the crew coming out and fixing it right away.
"We have a permit."
It costs around $200 at City Hall to pick up a permit.
Uh … okay, it isn't immediately obvious to me why that would be. My landlords insist on (literally) weekly leaf blowing, regardless of season, and so every Thursday the air outside the apartment is quite literally unbreathable, as it is slaked with dust and exhaust, and literally unbreathable inside if I were to open a window (i.e., living here, I have to remember to always close the windows prior to Thursday). Not to mention the sound.
Banning the gas ones fixes a portion of the problem, I suppose.
I don't think I'd care as much if the cadence was something reasonable, like monthly. One bad apple spoils the bunch.
> You don't want draconian laws randomly enforced.
This depends entirely on what the goal of the law is.
Paying tax on a vehicle driven in a state is not unreasonable. And holding the executives of a shell/numbered/privately-held/tax-dodging organization liable for taxes owed is not draconian.
You and I both benefit from having fire departments even if our possessions never ignite. The same is true for all sorts of common infrastructure.
Oh wait, that's what it is.
Our willingness as a society to tolerate the expense, danger, and health issues brought by extensive car use will be looked back on with bewilderment. You can start to see the insanity when a 'classic' car drives by. It's noisy, heavy, dangerous, and smelly. It's allowed to noticeably pollute any area it passes through. We've made progress, but that level of noise, danger, and pollution is how every car on your street used to be.
Car culture has a unique flavor of regressive entitlement. Every bit of societal and legislative progress that has made cars cleaner and safer has been fought tooth and nail by this group.
Our government created a vast, expensive, open to use resource in roads and infrastructure, offers minimal restrictions an licensing for its use, barely enforces existing safety laws, and the combustion crowd shows outrage at the loss of their illegal activities.
I wish our culture was less tolerant of this behavior. It is a tiny percentage that costs the rest of us constantly. Sometimes its a motorcycle club, others it just rich people shucking the social contract. I'm looking forward to the last Harley getting recycled.
There's artistic merit in historic industrial design & engineering, and keeping those things in an operational state; for which I am willing to tolerate the occasional puff of blue smoke.
I'm a newcomer to this hobby, and am amazed how this resentment has perpetuated since their muscle cars were neutered in the 70's by emissions regulations. The resentment has transferred to subsequent generations who were not alive then, who still complain about all the emissions and efficiency efforts that carmakers undertake. Too much unnecessary machismo hanging around.
The management was mostly of the opinion that gas prices would come down eventually, so there was little interest initially in making anything more efficient. Also, since small, efficient, cheap cars had miniscule or negative margins, there was a belief that competing in that market was optional.
Dream on. It'll never happen.
When did we decide that isolation was freedom.
In exchange, consider extending that same optionality to others whose preferences are different from your own.
Here was my summer vacation this year — good luck with that lmfao https://i.ibb.co/5XxDvbyK/Emi-2026-10-06-18-12-00.png
Let's say there are two classes of software engineers: A and B.
- A get paid $50k/year
- B get paid double that.
The reason why A gets paid lower is because they are commodity software engineers. Due to supply and demand, there is an oversupply of these commodity engineers which make them so cheap. They are very hardworking but so are B.
B are very high quality, creative, high impact engineers. These are highly capable people and due to biology and how IQ is distributed, naturally their numbers are way limited than the class A. Due to their productivity, impact and supply, their market price is higher.
Given the same inputs, B produces way more useful and valuable (to society) outputs than A. Their incomes reflect this.
From a voting perspective, members of both A and B both have the same number of votes.
Now questions:
1. What are your thoughts if A passes laws and regulations where their class doesn't pay any taxes but B's pays 60%?
2. given that software engineering is an extremely creative process, problem solving ability typically scales with IQ, and IQ follows a bell distribution, the literal volume of A is much higher than B, aka laws that put B at a disadvantage get passed incredibly faster than the other way around (due to sheer volume in a democratic process).
Do these resonate with you? Are there any logical fallacies in these statements?
If so, what are your thoughts about them? What should class B do?
Besides, it would be illogical--and unlikely--for Class A to tax Class B that much. If they did, and the predictable consequences followed, Class A would likely adjust the tax rate keep the population of Class B at an equilibrium state.
Let's stick to realistic what-if scenarios, shall we?
What would be Class A's motivation for keep the population of Class B at an equilibrium state?
> Let's stick to realistic what-if scenarios, shall we?
Prove to me then, that this is not how it happens right now or has happened for the last century.
Software engineers who make mid six figures and even 7 after bonuses and RSUs, working at high-frequency trading firms or the MAG 7 pay way more taxes than most of the typical Hacker News population does, and I would bet that population is faily well paid than the average random person.
That's not the way proof works. The burden is always to prove the presence of things, not the absence of them.
I'm not exactly sure what your angle is here. Why don't you just clearly set forth what your position on taxation is, and save us all the trouble?
Would you be in support of passing laws and regulations that cap A & B's taxes to single digits too?
If someone doesn't like California's taxation (or government), they are free to move out of the state, but they can't have it both ways - they don't get to live in California but register assets outside the state to avoid the taxation.