In MO there is the yearly registration/ license fee paid to the state. St. Louis County, where I live, also levies a yearly personal property tax on all vehicles which is considerably higher than the state registration tax.
So just to own a car the vehicle owner pays a sales tax on the purchase price, yearly licensing tax, and yearly personal property tax. If the owner sells the car the sale price is taxed as income. So, as I presume is typical in most if not all states, car owners are taxed for buying, owning, and selling a vehicle.
In some states those taxes are higher than in others depending on each state’s tax laws.
When I moved to MO and went to register/license my car that had been bought, titled, and taxed seven years earlier in NJ and six years later registered/licensed in OK, the twit at the privately owned franchise MO license bureau office insisted I had to pay sales tax on the original purchase price in NJ plus seven years penalty interest for not originally titling the car in MO at time of purchase. I refused and demanded all my paperwork back. I ended up having to snatch all my documents out of her hand and stomp out the door.
I barely got home when police showed up at my door saying they had report I was driving a stolen car and had committed assault. Thankfully the cops listened to my side of the story and looked at my documentation. I was asked which license bureau location I had gone to. Turns out the police were familiar with that franchise office running that profitable scam on many people new to the state. The officers were quite professional and nice. And they told me of several other license office locations where I could get my car properly licensed without hassle or scam.
Fast forward one year and I got pulled over on my way to work for expired car tags and given a ticket. Turned out the state DMV never sent a renewal notice and I had failed to pay attention to the tags being expired. So, I had to miss a day of work to get the car safety inspected at the mechanic shop, emissions tested at the state emissions facility, go to the license bureau to renew registration, and to the police station to show proof of all that, then to the government center office to pay the ticket.
Further fun was had when renewing the license at the license bureau. Seems I must have the renewal notice never mailed from the state in hand to be allowed to renew. That took an hour of the bureau calling the state and tracking down that the state never input my car licensing info into the state computer system the previous year when I first registered the car in MO. Finally, I was allowed to renew but had to pay a penalty for being late renewing.
After all that, when I got to the county government center office to pay the ticket the twit there tried to levy a penalty for not paying the ticket a month earlier. That required my demanding a supervisor look at the ticket and note the Very Clearly Written Date and Time the ticket had been issued several hours earlier that day for having license tags that expired a month previously. I ended up properly paying the ticket with no additional penalties.
Somehow I managed to remain courteous and business like throughout the infuriating fiasco both years but had steam coming out my ears to the point that both years the twits I dealt with complained they didn’t like my angry stare.
The ONLY people in both years fiascos that proved courteous and competant were the police officers. I remained courteous and cooperative with them and they treated me with courteous professionalism.
Fast forward to a few years ago when I went to renew my drivers license. Due to alopecia (an autoimmune condition) I permanently lost most of my hair many years ago so I wear wigs or decorative scarves. The young twit I had to deal with that day happened to know I wear a wig due to her having seen me in the grocery store many times when I was wearing a scarf. The idiot insisted I had to take my wig off for the license photo. That is one time I lost my temper enough to royally tell off a twit; not just for me but for all women needing to wear wigs due to chemo treatments, or alopecia, or simply due to thinning hair.
Fortunately the license office franchise owner/manager intervened and let me keep my wig on. Otherwise I would have marched out and gone to a different license office.
Those three experiences have left me with a decidely negative viewpoint of dealing with car and drivers licensing in the “Show Me” state of MO.
Frankly, getting to deal with a very professionally run temporary DMV state run license office this last time renewing the car tags was a refreshing exerience!
Oh, you mean Bob Dylan town?