Sharing this info to spare anyone else this headache.
We live in Maryland and our son moved to Virginia in late 2016. He obtained a Virginia DL, but we own the car he is using, so we kept it registered in MD. I even called the Virginia DMV to see if we had to transfer ownership of the car to him and register it in Virginia and was told no.
Yesterday, he rcvd a $436 bill from the county. Apparently Virginia charges an annual property tax on cars, who knew? The DMV did not mention this. It’s a $350 penalty plus the actual tax. So, we emailed requesting a waiver on the penalty portion since we own the car and live in Maryland.
Today, he got 2 more identical bills for 2016 and 2017!! So, now we have $1300 in these county auto tax bills. I found some coverage of this issue online - Fairfax County alone gets millions in these penalties because so many people are unaware of the law - it seems a pretty deliberate attempt to fleece new residents. I know that ignorance of a law is not a valid excuse, but we really thought we had everything covered. Now we have to keep trying to reach someone and see if we can get some of this waived.
My thoughts are that your son moved to VA two years ago and he owes VA the registration fees if he keeps the car in VA. OTOH, if your son does not have a car in VA, then he needs to appeal and show that he is carless (like many in NYC), i.e., uses public transport and/or Uber.
(I have trouble seeing the fleece comment. Virginia’s income taxes are lower than that of Montgomery County, so they have to make up the road maintenance fees somehow.))
I believe the controlling factor is not who owns the car but whether it is normally parked or garaged in Virginia. DMV has nothing to do with the car tax. Here’s a brief synopsis of the despised car tax:
The fact that Fairfax County alone rakes in $2 million a year in penalties, per WTOP, is where the fleece comment comes from. No one told him about this tax when he got his VA license and when I called the DMV, they did not mention it. How would anyone moving to Vitginia be reasonably expected to know this car tax exists? His landlord did not mention it. I don’t think it is well publicized, which I feel is a deliberate attempt to fleece new residents. How unwelcoming!
Note they did not bill him for 2016 or 2017 until today!
I just want to warn people, that’s all. I wish my cousin who lives in Fairfax County, or his boss, or his landlord had educated us.
@sabaray - thanks for the link. I’ve been reading up on this car tax all afternoon, including the wtop coverage and I even emailed that reporter with our story.
Maryland does not have a car tax and I am at a loss as to how we should have known about it. I have no issue paying the regular amount which is under $100/year, it is the $1000+ in penalties that has me steaming.
Why did they not notify us sooner? Sending 3 years of bills at once is outrageous. He recently moved and I am guessing that one of his new neighbors reported the out of state plates.
I already heard back from the wtop reporter, and he thought our best chance of a waiver is to show that the owner of the car, DH, does live in Maryland. We’ll give it a try.
We have personal property tax on vehicles in Alabama, it is included when paying for a car tag, the tag fee itself is something like $25, the rest is tax. The tax is based on the value of the vehicle, therefore as our vehicles aged our tax/tag amount decreased each year and finally reached a point where it is less than $5 of tax added to the tag fee. If you don’t purchase a tag(or have one from somewhere else) then you might not be aware of the tax. I imagine that won’t be a defense because legally when you are a resident of an area then you should have the car registered in that area.
I am guessing that someone reported his car, not sure how else they would have known, and after finding out they went searching to see how long he had been living in the area. When I went to college in Birmingham, I didn’t change anything since I don’t believe it is required because you are not a permanent resident. Later, my ex-husband and I lived in Birmingham and technically we should have changed our license and tag to reflect that, but we I guess we were still holding on to being residents of our hometown. I did have a couple of people at work say that they didn’t think it was right to be paying the lower rural area taxes when we were living in Birmingham, guess I was lucky that no one reported it. We wound up moving back to our hometown though so it was no longer an issue.
I grew up in MD but moved to VA for my first job many years ago. This personal property tax was in place then too, and I paid it as required (I don’t remember how I first heard about it, but it certainly wasn’t hidden).
It was common back then for those who thought they could get away with it to register their cars in MD or DC, and VA made it very easy for residents to report their neighbors for trying to avoid paying their share. If the state didn’t have this tax, they would need to raise an existing tax rate or create another form of taxation to generate the needed revenue. VA residents have no legal or moral right to register their cars elsewhere to avoid paying the tax.
In this case it appears to be an innocent mistake. However, VA isn’t likely to give him a break, as the facts look just like those in situations where residents are trying to game the system. If you’re lucky, they may cut some slack on the penalties. Whether they should or not is up for debate (just not here).
The bills are actually addressed to DH - since he is the owner of the car - but sent to son’s address. It is pretty clear to me that one of his new neighbors reported it and provided the MD license plate and son’s rental address. Then the county looks up the plate, gets DH’s name from the registration and puts the bill in his name. I have no idea how they went back to 2016 - son graduated college that year and lived at home with us in MD until the very end of the year.
@RandyErika - what do you think about the fact that son does not own the car? He is borrowing a car owned by a Maryland resident.
You wrote: VA residents have no legal or moral right to register their cars elsewhere to avoid paying the tax.
And I agree with that. But this is not his car. This is not a situation where he moved to Virginia with a car he owns and neglected to register it. I’m not sure that he even can register it on the county website as he is not the owner.
Yup. He is borrowing a car that we own. Registration and insurance in our names. When he is ready financially to buy a new car, that will be in his name. Is this arrangement that unusual? Don’t many families allow a young adult use of a family owned car? We own 4 cars (all on the older side, nothing fancy) and both our sons use one of our cars.
When my son move to MA, we learned he had to register the car and obtain MA insurance. So, even tho the car was registered to me, it made sense for me to transfer a title to him. I flew up at the end of the month and we went to DMV together.
Any police person seeing a car with out of state plates, parked regularly, could report the tags. Not every state is as strict as MA. I’m sorry you got all the extra charges.
Yes, I get that R-mom. My point was, however, that the bureaucrats in VA aren’t likely to buy the story, that the car is only temporarily in Virginia. Since the car is permanently ‘living’ in VA, the state will likely make the claim that it shoudl be registered – and taxed – in VA even tho your Hubby has a Rockville address. I’m sure that they run into this all the time…
Property is taxed where it’s located. Your son isn’t the one being taxed, and isn’t the one who needs to register it; your husband is. You asked two questions when he moved: did you need to transfer ownership to him and did he need to register it. When whoever you talked to answered, they answered the first question: you had no need to transfer it to him.
I’m pretty sure every state requires vehicles habitually garaged in that state to be registered in that state. Otherwise no one would have a car tagged in a high tax state.
@rockvillemom When our son moved out-of-state for grad school, we gave him the car he used for undergrad. Everything is in his name now, and we are not liable for anything in case of an accident. Is there some reason you are retaining ownership of the car?
@rockvillemom you asked if it was unusual for parents to let kids use cars when they graduated from college…that the parents own.
I think it is not common for parents to give a kid a car to garage out of state for two years…because most insurance companies won’t allow that…for two years. We asked about doing the same with one of our cars. Our insurance company said a huge NO…because the car was not being garaged where WE lived…at all…and the kid wasn’t any longer a college student.
So…we transferred ownership of the car to the OOS kid, and he then paid the bills. If he had t been able to pay the bills…we might have helped him…but we weren’t going to try to fool our car insurance company into believing that we actually resided part time in that other state…
I think you might be able to get the penalty waived…but maybe it’s time to transfer ownership of the car to your kiddo.