> “The bill would hold any officer, manager, partner, beneficial owner, or member of a shell company personally liable for any unpaid taxes, and any interest and penalties on those taxes, the nonpayment of which may constitute a crime, due on the purchase of a vehicle, vessel, or aircraft.”

Is dumb.

You want comprehensive enforcement with reasonable penalities.

You don't want draconian laws randomly enforced.

Next headline: More wealthy people leaving California.

These shenanigans with vehicle taxes happen whenever a neighboring state has a significantly better deal. People register vehicles in friends or families names who live in that state, or form a legal entity there which can own the vehicles. Of course then the high-tax state writes more and more convoluted definitions of "residency" for the vehicle to make it subject to taxation, which are either hard to discover/enforce as a practical matter or someone finds a new loophole and the avoidance games continue.

Thank you California

Our willingness as a society to tolerate the expense, danger, and health issues brought by extensive car use will be looked back on with bewilderment. You can start to see the insanity when a 'classic' car drives by. It's noisy, heavy, dangerous, and smelly. It's allowed to noticeably pollute any area it passes through. We've made progress, but that level of noise, danger, and pollution is how every car on your street used to be.

Car culture has a unique flavor of regressive entitlement. Every bit of societal and legislative progress that has made cars cleaner and safer has been fought tooth and nail by this group.

Our government created a vast, expensive, open to use resource in roads and infrastructure, offers minimal restrictions an licensing for its use, barely enforces existing safety laws, and the combustion crowd shows outrage at the loss of their illegal activities.

I wish our culture was less tolerant of this behavior. It is a tiny percentage that costs the rest of us constantly. Sometimes its a motorcycle club, others it just rich people shucking the social contract. I'm looking forward to the last Harley getting recycled.

I've seen car dealers in MA use Montana dealer plates. At the very least they are cheaper, avoids $220 / year excise tax and registration fees vs. $25 for Montana. I don't think it helps with any sales taxes- dealers don't have to pay when they buy cars, unlike customers. It would help if dealer uses the car personal reasons instead of just having it for resale.

Hmm... maybe I should start a car dealer just to avoid taxes on my next car..

The Montana plate for owners reminds of registering your boat in Wilmington Delaware to avoid state sales tax. You had to create an LLC to do this I think.

Can I just take this moment to mention that I think we need a better system for car registrations across the board? I don't like that there are all these edge cases with titles, insurance, inspections/smog, window tint, plate expiry, taxes etc whenever you move or even travel. It feels like we've just turned vehicle ownership into a profit opportunity for the police to harass everyone over completely inconsequential nonsense the second you cross any state line (emissions/insurance aren't nonsense but bear with me pedants). Similarly it creates a mountain of work every time you move.

I wish you could just register under an LLC or trust or something wherever and have a generic plate that can go anywhere and force the states to agree on a set of standards that apply across the country.

Alternatively allow people to keep their plates indefinitely like phone numbers. Yes, this creates arbitrage opportunities but maybe we should be bringing up the standards of the arbitrage states instead of having assholes threaten everyone with guns for random infractions.

I'm kinda just throwing ideas out there but this current system is Kafkaesque.

Eventually everything will be a use tax. It's the only fair tax and there will always be loopholes otherwise.