New car registration and delivery of new license plates are both handled by the dealership, and I can do almost all of my MVC (NJ's new-ish name for the DMV, following many reforms) business online.
Not all dealers and states off this service. It also gets tricky when you buy a vehicle in another state. Half the vehicles we bought since we moved to NH were bought in MA.
Some years back I bought thisâŠ
The seller was from California and provided me the following.
Signed and notarized, clean and clear CA title.
Notarized bill of sale.
Certificate of inspection from the LAPD.
Certificate of inspection from the CA Orange County sheriffâs office.
Certificate of inspection from the CA Highway Patrol.
Certificate of inspection from the OK City police department.
Certificate of inspection from the OK County sheriffâs office.
Certificate of inspection from the OK state highway patrol.
The tag agent would not give me an OK title and tag. After several trips in it became mildly combative and she was very snotty the last trip while stating that âyou are NEVER going to get an OK registration on that vehicleâ.
A few days later I took off work early and went to the tax commission at the state capitol. A supervisor there listened to a quick tale, perused the stack of paperwork, and said there was enough there to provide a 100 registrations. He called his assistant in and told her to go ahead an expedite my registration and tag on the spot. He also told me he had no idea why that woman refused to title the bike but did make the comment that some agents can be off in their own goofy world at times.
A few days after that I had to rub it in and dropped by the agent with title and tag in hand. This was in front of people waiting in line and the look on her scarlet red face was priceless when I told her the man at the tax commission said she was loopy.
We donât call them tax collectors here. They are called County Treasurers or Auditor/Treasurers. Then there are the Register of Deeds and County Clerks that take care of real estate, and other records such as birth and death, marriage etc. But vehicle records are handled at the state level with generally contract semi-private service centers around the state.
I personally donât like the term âtax collectorâ since it has biblical connotations for when they got a commission from all the money they could squeeze out of someone. But in addition it is not very accurate because there are hundreds of taxes such as sales, liquor, hunting, etc. that one person or office simply cannot handle and is collected for different levels of government and different purposes.