For the past several years, it’s been an open secret that Vermont is America’s Department of Motor Vehicles. Everyone from Doug DeMuro to myself have talked about registering some crapbox or school bus using the once-magical Vermont DMV. Seriously, Vermont was willing to register just about any vehicle to any person living anywhere in the United States so long as they could fulfill some very basic requirements. This has been a godsend to anyone rescuing a barn find motorcycle, saving a car from the crusher, or building a bus into a motorhome. Unfortunately, not everyone had honest intentions and many people used Vermont to register stolen cars or to run a weird quasi DMV of their own. Now, because of these people, Vermont has closed up its DMV to outsiders.
Nearly three years ago, I was a fresh face over at Jalopnik. My girlfriend (now wife) bought me a school bus and I bragged to my colleagues about how I made it legal to drive thanks to Vermont. Normally, you would need a CDL to drive a large school bus, but thanks to Vermont’s then incredibly loose rules, my bus was easily registered as a motorhome.
This shocked my colleagues so much that my editor told me to write about it. I obliged, and ever since, I worried that my article was going to be the reason Vermont reversed course. But I wasn’t the only one. YouTube personalities like Doug DeMuro talked about using the Vermont registration “loophole” and even Hagerty still has multiple articles up about Vermont that predate my own. In fact, I learned about the loophole from someone on Opposite-Lock and used the plethora of then-existing online tutorials to figure it out for myself.
Following that article, my inbox was filled with nastygrams from people saying–and this is watering it down–that I killed a secret. However, the piece didn’t actually get as many clicks as you’d think, and for more than two years after, you could still register vehicles in Vermont while living anywhere in the country. Weirdly, Vermont temporarily even extended the scope of its mail-order DMV during the pandemic. For the price of just $6, you were able to register any car in any state and you didn’t even need to prove that you owned it. You got your plates instantly onto your phone or printed out. Absurd, right?
Back in 2020, I spoke with a Vermont DMV official and they informed me that they were well aware that people in other states were using Vermont as a mail-order DMV. At the time, the general consensus appeared to be that car and motorcycle enthusiasts were basically paying the state money to never drive their cars in the state. Vermont requires inspections and Vermont can’t inspect a car that’s in, say, Wisconsin. Thus, Vermont-plated cars from other states were technically illegal to drive in Vermont unless they were inspected.
Unfortunately, the wrong crowd got attracted to the Vermont loophole and started using it to register stolen cars as well as other shady practices. Things apparently got violent, too. So, as of June 26, 2023, the loophole is officially closed.
What Was The Loophole Anyway?
I could not determine the exact moment when Vermont became a mail-order DMV, but I can tell you that it’s been going on for at least a decade. I’m sure many readers are scratching their heads about this, too. Over the years, I’ve met countless people who couldn’t wrap their heads around how Vermont’s DMV operated. Since the loophole is now closed, I’ll explain how it worked.
Here’s a situation perhaps countless car enthusiasts have encountered. You found a rusty car in a barn and have decided to save it. It doesn’t have a title and who knows when it last had one. This car is savable, but you live in a state that requires a title. Sure, you could go through your own DMV to get a bonded title or some other route to make the car legal, but this takes time and often lots of money. For example, here’s how my state of Illinois handles bonded titles:
A bond is required when standard ownership documents (i.e., assigned title) cannot be surrendered with an Application for Certificate of Title (625 ILCS 5/3-109). The Secretary of State may, as a condition of issuing a Certificate of Title, require the applicant to file a bond in the amount equal to one and one-half times the current wholesale value of the vehicle. The filing of this bond will protect the Secretary of State’s office and any prior owner or lienholder as well as any subsequent purchasers, or person acquiring security interest or respective successors, against any expense, loss or damage due to the issuance of a Certificate of Title. The bond (and the deposit filed with a cash bond) must be returned at the expiration of three (3) calendar years from the date of filing, unless the Secretary of State has been notified pending any action to recover on the bond.
For Illinois, wholesale value is determined by a written appraisal by a licensed new or used car dealer. Fellow hooptie lover Stephen Walter Gossin tells me that in his state, the previous owner has to go to the DMV with you and there are additional hurdles that make it not worth it for cheap cars. This all sounds like a major headache if you’ve just rescued a $500 car or motorcycle from the scrapper. And remember, you can’t legally drive the vehicle to get it appraised, so there’s another expense. Would I have gotten a bonded title for this clapped out Toyota Camry that I used as a rally car? Absolutely not!
This is where Vermont came in. The state does not title vehicles that are 15 years old or older. If the hooptie you’re saving is old enough, all of the proof of ownership you need is a bill of sale and a VIN verification, both of which take no effort to obtain. If you’re dealing with motorcycles, the state doesn’t title anything under 300cc. So, you could buy a brand new scooter and register it in Vermont without issue. Vermont also doesn’t title trailers under 1,500 pounds or electric motorcycles making less than 20 kW of power.
The state was also an incredible resource for people converting former commercial vehicles into motorhomes. See, many states have a list of requirements before they’ll let you register a bus or similar into an RV. Once again, we’ll look at Illinois, which says you need at least four of the following:
a) A cooking facility with an on-board fuel source;
b) A gas or electric refrigerator;
c) A toilet with exterior evacuation;
d) A heating or air conditioning system with an on-board power or fuel source separate from the vehicle engine;
e) A potable water supply system that includes at least a sink, a faucet, and a water tank with an exterior service supply connection;
f) A 110-125 volt electric power supply
Now, these requirements aren’t too hard to meet. In theory, you could just cobble something together just to pass the inspection. Problem is, there’s a whole headache before this happens. If the vehicle is a bus, you very likely need a license in the proper weight class before you could even drive it off of the seller’s property. Even if you do have a proper license, you will need insurance and you might run into problems if the vehicle isn’t registered as an RV first. Sadly, I speak from experience. My RTS bus wasn’t registered as an RV at first and my insurance company wouldn’t even touch it. My wife’s insurance company required the bus to be converted into an RV and for said conversion to have been done by a specially-licensed company.
This is where Vermont really shined. The state does not require you to prove that a vehicle is an RV. Instead, you just told the state you wanted a motorhome registration and you’d get one.
Until June 26th, when you visited the Vermont DMV website’s FAQ section, you would find that the state said that you didn’t need to live in Vermont to register a car in Vermont. But how did that work?
It was actually frighteningly simple. All you had to do was fill out Vermont form VD-119 with your actual information, include a bill of sale, include a proof of VIN check, include a check for the fees, then send that baby off to Vermont. If the vehicle has a title or was newer than 15 years old, substitute the VIN check and bill of sale for the title. After you let it cook for about two weeks, Vermont would send license plates back to wherever you lived in the United States. Two weeks after that, you got your registration card, which stated in bold print that it was your proof of ownership. If you sent in a title, you’d get back a Vermont title. Boom, your vehicle is now legal.
Why would you register a car in Vermont if you already had a title? Well, Vermont taxes are six percent of your purchase price or NADA trade-in value, whatever is higher (minimum of $500). Registration is also just $76 for cars, trucks, and motorhomes and just $48 for motorcycles. That means if you live someplace with high registration costs, you could save a ton of money by registering in Vermont. To use Illinois again, it’ll cost you a minimum of $400 to title and register a car in this state, tack on a ton more money if you live in Chicago and even more money if it’s a car that was made in the past ten years. Registering a car in Vermont is at least half of the price of registering in Illinois.
In short, Vermont has for many years been America’s DMV. If you wanted to rescue an old motorcycle from a barn, wanted to make an old hooptie road legal again, wanted to build an RV, or didn’t like your state’s taxes, Vermont openly offered a solution. Pay the state money and get back shiny plates, often without a single question asked.
You could then take the registration you got from Vermont, turn it in to your state’s DMV, and got the title you were seeking. Back in 2021, you were even able to buy paper plates for $6 for any vehicle, without any VIN check or proof of ownership whatsoever. You could have stolen someone’s car and registered it in mere minutes. The easy temporary plate program was eventually closed down, but I did give it a try before it shuttered and it was even easier than I make it sound.
Based on this, perhaps what happened next was always bound to happen.
Locking Down The Loophole
On June 26, 2023, Vermont updated its policies on issuing registrations to people living out of state, and it effectively closes the loophole. I was tipped off to the change by TheBarber on Opposite-Lock. Here’s the document in question:
To save you the time of reading the whole thing, Vermont changed its policies so that you can get a plate from the state only if you can prove some sort of legitimate connection to Vermont. Perhaps you have a home there and your car spends most of its time there. Or perhaps you have a business in Vermont.
Vermont does offer a sort of weird exception, and it’s if you live in a state that does not require you to register your car to the state. However, to use that exception, you have to physically go to your state’s DMV and have your state coordinate with Vermont, proving that you can drive a Vermont-registered car wherever you live. Only then can Vermont’s mail-order DMV still work for you.
This has generated lots of questions. What caused this to happen? Who ruined the loophole? What do you do if you own a car that’s currently registered in Vermont? Doesn’t Vermont like getting free money from people who don’t even drive there? To get the answers to these questions, I reached out to Mike Smith, Deputy Commissioner of the Vermont DMV. Smith’s office responded to my questions as follows:
An increasing number of non-Vermont residents have been requesting Vermont registrations and titles for their vehicles. The practice has increased to include a group of the same individuals making these requests a few times per week on behalf of owners who are rarely, if ever, present. The owners are residents from as far away as Florida and California.
The transactions are generally delivered by “runners” that have power of attorney for the applicants. When there are paperwork issues, these runners become very hostile and belligerent to the staff as they have traveled a long way to conduct their business. Due to these hostilities, the DMV now stations sworn law enforcement officers at several branch offices. Also, DMV is seeing the same signatures on the power of attorney forms and applications, leading us to question the authenticity of these power of attorneys.
Many applicants process their transactions, receive the necessary title or registration, and then file for a refund of the registration fees because they never actually use the plate. They are coming just for the paperwork and may never even drive the vehicle. The fees generated from our out-of-state transactions should stay in the applicants’ home states and we believe that the impacted states would agree.
Some customers have been forthright about why they come to Vermont for registration and titling. Common reasons include lower costs and shorter waiting periods in Vermont. Salvage title inspections, for example, can take upwards of 6 months to complete in some states. Some states require proof of insurance before processing a transaction. Some states require a valid driver’s license to register a vehicle. It has also been determined that some of the vehicles being registered in Vermont have been stolen and some have been found to have fraudulent ownership documents.
Other states have procedures to handle these situations, so people come to Vermont to circumvent them. Vermont is enabling this behavior by assisting these applicants in avoiding the policies and procedures of their home states.
For these reasons, Vermont has established a new policy for out-of-state residents conducting business with Vermont DMV. Such customers will now complete a form that requires them to visit their home state DMV. A member of that state’s motor vehicle department/agency must certify that the applicant is not required to register their vehicle in their home state. One form is required for each vehicle. Additionally, we have created a standardized Power of Attorney form that applicants are required to use. This form must be signed by the actual owner, be witnessed and notarized, and the form must be the original. This policy is in compliance with Act No. 60 of the 2023 legislative session creating the Uniform Power of Attorney Act, which became effective July 1, 2023.
I’ve been told that those currently with Vermont registrations may renew their plates, so this largely impacts new registrations.
The short version of the story is that along with people circumventing their states’ rules and fees regarding vehicle registration, there appears to have been some shady business going on. Some people, as I predicted long ago, were using Vermont to register stolen cars. It seems some people were also registering vehicles in Vermont to avoid having car insurance and to avoid having a driver’s license. I wasn’t even aware Vermont was sending plates out to unlicensed drivers. Overall, it sounds like a lot of people were causing the state a lot of headaches.
That aside, please don’t be hostile to DMV staff. They’re human just like you.
The concern also wasn’t just limited to Vermont. In 2022, Florida Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles issued a warning about potential title fraud utilizing Vermont registrations. Florida decided to lock down the issue by requiring the Vermont registration papers to also have a Vermont address on them.
What’s Next
Unfortunately, the closure of Vermont’s once legendary DMV services will mean that a lot of vehicles that could be saved will now meet the business end of a crusher. Depending on where you live, it may be difficult, expensive, or outright impossible to register certain cars and motorcycles. That classic Buick in a barn may not be worth trying to save if it doesn’t come with any paperwork.
Some states, like Illinois, won’t even register a vehicle if the previous owner is deceased. That’s a problem my wife and I encountered when we bought a $600 Dodge Dakota to make into a rally truck.
Vermont saved the day when Illinois told us to scrap the truck. Because of Vermont, that truck got to be a truck for some epic road trips rather than spend its final days rotting in a garage.
So, what can you do? We might follow this up with a 50-state explainer on registering vehicles with title problems, but for now, reach out to your state’s motor vehicle officials and ask about your options. You’ll likely be able to get a bonded title, but don’t expect that to be cheap or easy. Whatever it is, it’ll almost certainly be harder than sending a check to Vermont.
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Could I have skirted all these stupid-expensive ~$550 EV registration fees in Iowa all this time? Damn..
I live in Eastern upstate NY, less than an hours drive from the VT border. I’ve know about this since the 90s. It’s been known that if you see a local driving around with VT plates, then theres either something sketchy going on with their NY license or the title on their car, or both. See it all the time.
This is just as much the fault of Autopian and YouTubers like Doug Demuro. It was an amazing loophole known to enthusiasts until people like you decided they needed content and clickbait to make pennies on the dollar compared to it’s value to the community to inform the world. I always knew it would be a matter of time until content creators would ruin it.
I mean how many enthusiasts got to learn about it and use it for the last 2+ years because of this Author and Doug?
Bad people will suck no matter what, blaming those spreading the knowledge feels unjustified.
This is clearly the fault of assholes who abused the system. As I read it, Vermont didn’t stop this because too many people were doing it, they stopped it because people were doing illegal things with it and abusing DMV employees. That’s why we can’t have nice things, not because somebody talked about it online.
but Ian is a moron, so he won’t read this comment
I think Ian’s saying that criminals learned about the loophole through enthusiast sites/vlogs, or that word eventually trickled to them via those channels.
The real problems started when Vermont started issuing online temp tags during the pandemic. They were available to anyone, regardless of state, without any connection to Vermont at all. All you had to do was pay the $6 and enter the info, and you could print the tag out immediately.
And like already mentioned in the article, people were using those, as well as real plates, from VT to commit crimes such as registering stolen cars.
They didn’t stop it simply because people were doing it.
Other states were mulling suing Vermont because of the crimes, and Florida identified fraud being used via the Vermont loophole.
It predates the Autopian and the pandemic.
This is a stupid comment and you should be both banned from this site and your IP address on a permanent ban list.
I can’t imagine a dumber take on this, but here you are
Man, this is a bummer. I used this more than a few times. I had a car that didn’t have a title, I had a salvage bike I couldn’t get a clean title / plates for, it was all legit and for vehicles I owned and used, but I can see why they shut this down. Michigan isn’t too bad to register vehicles but it’s no Vermont. RIP Vermont Loophole.
Couldn’t you simply register an LLC or Corporation in Vermont, and then register the vehicle in the name of the entity?
That certainly seems to work in Montana…
I wish I’d have known about this before it got shutdown. I hate it when shitty people ruin things for everyone.
Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to make friends with someone from Vermont lol
Meanwhile, in the UK, the plates stay with the car, and you can apply for the registration document of any vehicle on-line. Any vehicle at all, just fill out a V62 form. Just tick the box that’s says you bought it without a registration document.
If you build a car out of parts and stuff you can get it registered after an inspection. Absolute worst case you end up with a registration number that starts with a Q, which just hurts resale.
I know that seems easy, but we also have the burden of free healthcare and all the extra letters to cram in to words that don’t need them, so it all evens out.
Northern Ireland gets its own special system, I’ve no idea how it works. I only mention it because I was over there last week and the funny plates were one of the two things that struck me as odd, the other one being American tourists wearing kilts.
Wow Illinois DMV suuuuuuucks
Yeah they kinda do.
Maine still does it. Don’t ruin it and I didn’t tell you.
But Maine is strongly opposed to JDM cars (Delicas, at least) so not much good for me…
Pretty sure you have to do it in person at the whatever town office. However I don’t think you have to live in said town, as they never check my I’d. If you willing to pay excise on it, most towns won’t care. And you can register anything with a vin as a farm vehicle. Which shouldn’t matter if you never set foot in Maine. So if your willing to drive to Eliot Maine you could probably register a bus as a farm vehicle. You could definitely do it if you know a person in Maine to mail the title to.
There are mail in services that do it for Maine. Look at how many trailers you see with Maine plates. They do cars too, but yes they stopped doing the Kei trucks and JDM cars and vans. You don’t have to be a resident because of the large number of summer people that have houses and keep a car in Maine.
Curtis I have a 32 Marmon that I am trying to get the / A title for. How does one do the mail in version?
Google “Maine trailer registration” most of those services do cars too. Pick one. You need a bill of sale and power of attorney. Send them those and pay them. You’ll get a Maine registration and plate. You then use the transferable Maine registration to get a title in your state.
Thank you Curtis in advance for the info. I am just trying to get a title so I can pay for plates and enjoy it. Unfortunately it had been sitting so long there wasn’t knowledge of a title anyware.. 🙁
New Hampshire should have given the title of “Live Free Or Die” to Vermont years ago!
Vermont probably could have gotten in trouble with this system quite some time ago. It was just too freewheeling because it had no requirements of residency or interest in the state of Vermont itself. How and why it kept going is a bit beyond me. But if someone were to really dig deep into it, I wouldn’t be surprised if the resulting politics of it all were… fascinating.
Vermont was probably the cheapest, most frictionless state to just get a car back on the road or create a proper title out of thin air for a title-less car so it could be properly titled in a different state that has a Byzantine title process. But there are others, mainly among the Western states. They tend to require some sort of connection to the state — either a business/LLC registration or some other accepted way to create a legal address (but not a “domicile”). There’s some additional but not insurmountable cost involved. It’s also not as quick, which is fine if you’re creating a title for something like a barn find, an inherited car, or a 25-year-rule import into title status. But it won’t help much if you’re trying to get a car on the road right now — You’d have to plan ahead and spend some cash in advance.
Can these systems used in other states still be used for crime? Certainly. But the additional steps tend to weed out car thievery and car registrations related to small-time drug activity. What they don’t weed out is car title transactions connected to white collar crime or connected to any business or political activity that requires layers of pseudo- to complete anonymity. At least one of them (allegedly) has some favor by the Federal government when it needs to create registrations with a whitewashed paper trail — because sometimes it’s essential for vehicles used in drug stings, or as part of the background smoke-and-mirrors necessary to making aspects of witness protection work safely. Some of this will never go away; it’s a matter of finding and understanding how to work these systems for difficult title situations encountered with collectible and enthusiast vehicles.
Mercedes — for your own information since you’re a RV enthusiast, check out resources for full-time RVers, especially with respect to motorhomes and bus conversions. There’s one state in particular that’s very friendly them. I’m not going to name it, and I suggest you keep it out of broad publication for now just so there’s less chance of contributing to a flood of activity shifting suddenly toward it. There is, and has been for a long time, quite the cottage industry there for establishing the necessary steps to register and title vehicles there. One particular county DMV office there is well-known to be a willing part of the system which even includes ways to establish residency there in a streamlined overnight process. That’s especially helpful to full-time RVers who run afoul of their home state’s rules. (There are a few that are actively hostile to their own residents who spend more time on the road than inside their own state borders.) I suspect it works as well as it does because they’ve gone to the trouble of recognizing particular agents as legitimate. That way they dodge the problem Vermont had with shady guys and fabricated powers of attorney.
TL:DR version: The easy, casual way to get a car titled with virtually no questions asked might be gone. But there are other states with ways to do it as long as you have a little bit of money for fees, some time, and a willingness to work through a fairly simple step-by-step legal and business procedure. And that should be enough to work for car hobbyists.
Be careful, or the idiot commenter named Ian G will come by to blame you for all of society’s ills
Lets be honest Steph should be researching and writing this article. State or not Vt was providing legal protection for illegal activities. And as a government cant claim ignorance i guess a few AGs discussed a class action lawsuit with VT. which convinced VT to stop white washing stolen cars. But ask Steph is this a class action lawsuit by allowing car thiefs to retitle stolen cars when the state should know better especially after thousands of complaints?
Who?
Maybe he means Sheryl? We could do a Lawtopian followup!
dude, your post makes no sense, and you should feel bad about it
Officer Farva would like to have a word with y’all
This sucks because it was one of the few ways to resolve tittle issues.
I looked into Vermont after a Washington dealer sold me a 2007 Mustang GT that they turned out not to have a title for. The title was still in the name of the deceased original owner, and I ended up owning a car for seven months that I couldn’t register and which my landlord almost had towed away.
Obviously I could have sued Tacoma Honda over this, which also would have been a nightmare. Less of a nightmare than losing a GT with a manual trans and 14k miles on it.
If only there was a way to resolve title issues in the states we live in. However, the police of many states will impound your car for a title issue, and then action it off after their DMV issue a title for it. That is what almost happened here in Oregon, as I found out that if it had been impounded I couldn’t get it back with a bill of sale…
Sad to see it go, but at least I got to use it. I got a title for my old, title-less 1974 Honda CB motorcycle this way.
Do you still just pay a one-time “use tax” in IL? That was a pleasant surprise when I lived there considering all of the other taxes they kill you with in that state.
Since I’m on the subject of titling, I have to share a gripe. We had an old Coleman pop-up camper when I was a kid that my dad gifted to my uncle several years ago. He is now done with it, and gifted it to me. I go to get it titled, pay the title fee, and instead of a title in the mail I get a letter telling me that I have to pay taxes because a vehicle can’t be gifted twice in a row. They request that I indicate the fair market value and tax rate and mail the letter back (weird). I did my best to figure the FMV of a friggin 1985 Coleman camper ($700 was my best guess). I get another letter with a hand-written note saying “pay taxes on $700”. I return that with a check for $55, and it takes them 3 months to process the payment! $55 isn’t a big deal, but the fact that I owe the state of MO sales tax on something I didn’t even purchase just pisses me off to no end!
And don’t even get me started on personal property taxes!
*Elderly man shakes fist at sky*
Get off my lawn!
At least you will be able to gift it to your nephew in 2044 with no problems.
Haha. One of them will get it whether they like it or not!
My state is so committed to the idea of having “no sales tax” that they instead charge a “document fee” whenever you register a vehicle, which is 4.25% of either the purchase price or the NADA value, whichever is higher. Because the value of the car somehow determines how much it costs them to print a registration slip, maybe they do use gold ink and vellum for Bugattis, I dont know.
If you move here from out of state for work, and have a car you already paid sales tax on when you bought it in your previous state, you pay 4.25% again here. If you inherit a vehicle, you pay it, gift a vehicle, the person you give it to pays it.
Also, you can’t title any trailer unless the original VIN tag is in perfect condition, any issues with it, there’s no way to fix it besides sell it out of state to a place that doesn’t issue titles for them.
Most everywhere it is officially called a “sales and use” tax. You are getting hit on the “use” part.
We Missourians have finally taken the lead of several other states and have enacted a law requiring you pay your taxes and get your plate at the dealer. Temp tag abuse has been really bad for a long time, with people driving on 30-day temp tags for years. Several jurisdictions started focusing on temp tag enforcement on certain days of the week: “Temp tag Tuesdays”, and even getting people at their homes. I definitely liked the process when I lived in Illinois, being able to skip the DMV later and rolling the sales tax into the loan if needed.
This is sad, I bought a del sol for cheap with no title or registration, and I used Vermont to get it registered in my state. Since it was my first car and I didn’t have transportation it also saved me a trip to the DMV that would have been very hard for me to do. However, I understand why they’re doing this, and I was wondering why they didn’t do this sooner. I also learned after the fact that I didn’t actually need Vermont in my case. If you’re in my state (Connecticut) and you don’t have a title or registration, you are supposed to get an affidavit in lieu of a title or previous registration, whichever you need.
OREGON: Bought a ’69 Ford F250 last October with no title, just bill of sale and handwritten note explaining how the seller towed the truck off a friend’s rural property (it had been there for many years spanning multiple property owners).
Thought about going the Vermont route.. But did this instead:
Oregon DMV provided registered owner’s address, suggested I send a registered letter to them requesting release. When letter came back unopened, DMV issued me the title. Had the registered letter not been returned after 3 months, DMV would have issued title also. Since then I fixed up & sold the truck.
People in the SoCal car community started using Vermont to get around smog laws. I wonder what those people are going to do now? It’s not exactly cheap to hot smog a 2JZ swapped S14 these days.
Probably the Montana LLC thing:
https://www.49dollarmontanaregisteredagent.com
https://1dollarmontana.com
Utah makes barn finds reasonably easy. Not Vermont easy, but still totally doable for cheap cars. No bond required if the vehicle can be valued under $3K, which photos of how garbage it is and a bill of sale showing low purchase price will usually do that. A few filled out forms and a VIN inspection signed by a Utah police officer after they check the vin for stolen. Taxes are 6% of purchase price. If 30 years old or more, register it as Vintage Vehicle and registration is like $60 per year or so. I’ve done like 3 abandoned titles and a friend has done another handful.
I get the temporary use thing, but for ongoing, regular use of a vehicle, I’d be afraid some Karen neighbor would report me to the relevant authorities for tax evasion. I know a lot of jurisdictions have started programs encouraging such snitching:
https://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/dta_taxevaders/
https://www.westmoreland-county.org/report-tax-evader-license-plate/
Vermont may not have cared if a car in Virginia got Vermont tags, but that still wouldn’t make it kosher in the eyes of Virginia (or lots of other states I believe).
Washington State has this as well.
I mean… I understand why people on here are disappointed that this ended because of certain edge cases, and the SOS/DMV can be genuinely maddening. At the same time, this system just seemed like a nightmare ripe for fraud and abuse and I think ending it was the right call. Especially since in a lot of cases, I’m sure people were simply avoiding paying their fair share of registration fees. I spend $400/year to properly register my three cars in Michigan. Sort of feel like a chump if my fellow citizens here are bypassing that.
Also, I don’t think a lot of the non-criminal folks utilizing this “loophole” realize how much they’re playing with fire here. Generally, your car has to be registered and insured in the same state (the one that you live in). It’s all fun and games until you get into an accident and your insurance company starts poking around about why you live/work in one state and have your car registered/insured in another and decides to deny your claim. This happens all the time in Michigan when someone lives in Detroit proper but registers and insures their vehicle at an address in the suburbs to save money. I have no personal experience with registering a car in a state where I don’t reside, but it seems as if the (reputable) auto insurance companies wouldn’t insure a vehicle with a Vermont registration in a different state. Which means that a lot of people (maybe not all) are probably lying.
Weirdly, we’ve had no problems insuring a vehicle plated in Vermont or Wisconsin while living in Illinois. This site’s Ski-Klasse project also resides in Illinois with pretty green VT plates on it.
Likewise, we’ve run into no problems with law enforcement and the like. They run the plate, look at the registration card, and continue handling the traffic stop. Once, we got told to transfer the registration to Illinois, but that’s about it. Likewise, IL’s DMVs have also not complained when it came time to convert the VT reg to an IL reg. No lying needed!
I’m sure many states and some insurers see VT plates as big red flags. See Florida’s concerns above. But, some places just didn’t really care…at least not enough to make it not worth it.
I live in MD. I’ve had a beater registered/tagged via VT for 6+ years. The registration has my MD home address on it. Never once has my insurance ever asked me if the car was registered in MD or anything along those lines, nor have they ever failed to issue/renew a policy on the vehicle. At one point early in my VT registration I had to take it off the road for a bit to repair I couldn’t afford right away and cancelled the insurance. I emailed VT DMV just to make sure that would not be an issue and inquired whether I would have to return the plates prior to cancelling ins. (that is a big deal with MD registration, if ins is cancelled prior to DMV receiving plates, BIIIIIG penalty fines ensue and similar to IRS penalties, the late fees and fines increase daily. VT DMV told me it was not an issue which blew my mind. I could have kept driving that car without insurance all this time. But the way my luck works I would have hit someone the first time I drove without ins. So I never took that risk. Even though the car was only legal by technicality, I never took the risk of driving it illegally. Sadly I guess this means I will have to make it legit before my next renewal.
to add, I’ve even been pulled over near home while driving said VT tagged car. Officer asked why I had VT plates. I said bought the car there but live here. Cop never batted an eye or questioned it further.
Note that Michigan has an unusually strong form of no-fault insurance which may affect how some types of claims are handled.
I don’t know how good of a loophole this actually is. Illinois doesn’t let you register vehicles in another state and if you’re moving to Illinois, you’re supposed to register your vehicle in the state within 30 days. So it seems like a bit of a stretch to say this makes you “legal”. If you bought your vehicle more than 3 months ago you can avoid the sales tax, but you still need to register it in Illinois.
Don’t love the whole “I can drive a vehicle that would normally require a CDL with a normal license thing either”.
I don’t know the numbers, but for many the idea was to get the legitimate issued by VT registration (because you can’t title a car in many states based simy on a bill of sale, but you can if it was legitimately titled or registered, whatever the other state requires, in your name in the other state) then get the car titled in the owner’s resident state. Not just get the VT registration and drive forever on VT plates. People get in trouble for that kind of thing all the time in my state.