Why do Texans not pay for our roads? (Aspen, Vail: sales, lease)

[JohnCurtisEstes]

Seems to me that Texans who move here or have lived here quite awhile never seem to get Colorado plates on their cars.


Californians seems to be pretty good about it but not sure why Texans never seem to want to pay our license fees and help the state w/ it's road issues.


How do they get away w/ this? I thought the law was you had to get CO. plates after you have lived here a certain amount of time.

[ringwise]

Originally Posted by JohnCurtisEstes

Seems to me that Texans who move here or have lived here quite awhile never seem to get Colorado plates on their cars.


Californians seems to be pretty good about it but not sure why Texans never seem to want to pay our license fees and help the state w/ it's road issues.


How do they get away w/ this? I thought the law was you had to get CO. plates after you have lived here a certain amount of time.

How do you know those Texans have lived there for awhile?

How do you know they are Californians if they have CO plates?

[TCHP]

New residents who establish a permanent residence in the state have 90 days to update motor vehicle registrations and drivers licenses to Colorado documents.

If they do not establish permanent residency, then they have no obligation to surrender their plates or license. Additionally, Dept of Defense workers are exempt from local registrations on vehicles they bring with them as well as their drivers licenses. Living here without it being your permanent residence is not that difficult to do. In the case of Texas, they do not have a state income tax, whereas Colorado does. California typically has much higher tax rates than anything in Colorado. See some motivation here?

Yes, there are significant numbers of Texans who maintain secondary residences in Colorado. Kissing Camels Estates in Cos is one such area. As a matter of fact, the Texan that owns KCE does not sell the land any of those houses are built on. Every building in that sub-division is built on land with a 100 year lease. You only own the structure, not the land. This attracts a certain income class of temporaray residents who won't be registering their cars anytime in the future.

Breckenridge, Vail, Aspen, Telluride, Steamboat and many other resort areas have similar temporary occupancy by any number of other residents from out of state.

[bluescreen73]

My take on out of state plates goes something like this - if you're a legal permanent resident of State A and you have no legal justification for keeping your car registered in State B you're no better than the jackwagons who drive without insurance and/or a valid driver's license. You're a dirtbag scofflaw.

Why does it happen? Because proving someone's car is illegally registered is onerous and cops have more important things to do. I personally believe the fine for an improper registration should be high - say $2500 or twice your vehicle's annual registration cost (whichever is greater). After receiving the ticket you have 30/60 days to re-register your vehicle and the ticket/fine will be dismissed.

[StealthRabbit]

Originally Posted by bluescreen73

... proving someone's car is illegally registered is onerous and cops have more important things to do. ....

Our state is adjacent to a low cost Auto License state w/ no sales tax, so they have an automated system for finding cheats.

• Photo all the OoS plates during commute hours,
• compare ownership to Utility records,
• send one warning,
• follow up with $1000 ticket.

Texas is not a low auto license fee state, for temporary CO residents, there may be some incentive to keep registration there. (PITA of having multiple state titling / renewals. )

Keeping tax domicile in TX has significant advantage (No state income tax), but PT CO residents don't want to trigger a CO domicile, so must follow those rules.

Many FT RV folks keep a SD Domicile (income tax free, one day / lifetime stay requirement)
they register their RV's and expensive cars through a MT LLC (no sales tax and lifetime registration available, no emissions, no safety inspections)

[MN_Ski]

There are 5 CA plates, 2 NY plates, and a few others in my neighborhood that have been there since (at least) Feb. All of them are permanent residents. Two of them that park in the alley have been expired since June. It's kind of funny, I want to hate these people for doing this, but I always end up talking/drinking with all the neighbors and have a good time.

[caverunner17]

There's also the notion of the Colorado DMV requiring a birth certificate or a passport to get your licence. My passport just expired and I have no idea where my birth certificate is.

I actually went to the DMV, waited in line for 2.5 hours and got turned down, even with my old passport, SS card, utility bills, lease and my current IL license.

I figure if they're going to be that over the top that I'll just wait until next year when my IL plates expire, giving me time to figure out how to get a new birth certificate.

[MN_Ski]

^ You can usually get a new copy online for just a few bucks.

[pikabike]

I always wondered how the highly paid director of a department I used to work in got away with keeping her ID plates, more than 5 years after she had moved to CO.

Meanwhile, another, lower-paid worker sucked up the $500 registration fee which she had already just renewed in her old home state, in effect paying twice because states do not refund the fees if you move before the year is up. Which I, too, had found out a few years earlier.

My impression is that CO did not pay much attention to registration scofflaws. My husband and I often would count the expired year tabs on cars stopped at lights. There were a LOT of them.

CO finally caught up with the unpaid-trailer-fee scofflaws, though. Some guy was quoted whining about having to pay for fees on FIVE formerly unregistered (unrenewed, actually) trailers, because "We never got in trouble for this before." Well, given that previously the trailer fees had been very cheap and they jumped up when the state tried to make up for all those years of lost revenue, I sure didn't feel sorry for him. Thanks to rich bstards like him, the fee for my small, light trailer which I had always registered more than doubled. If he could buy that many nice trailers, he could pay the registration fees.

We also had a neighbor who had been driving a truck with tabs that had expired more than a year and a half earlier. His truck failed emissions and he didn't feel like paying to bring it into compliance. Based on the number of expired tabs we saw, there were a lot of people who just ignored the law, feeling invincible.

[MN_Ski]

Originally Posted by caverunner17

There's also the notion of the Colorado DMV requiring a birth certificate or a passport to get your licence. My passport just expired and I have no idea where my birth certificate is.

I actually went to the DMV, waited in line for 2.5 hours and got turned down, even with my old passport, SS card, utility bills, lease and my current IL license.

I figure if they're going to be that over the top that I'll just wait until next year when my IL plates expire, giving me time to figure out how to get a new birth certificate.

update for the link:
https://www.vitalchek.com/vital-reco...17679874&ppc=0