Tuesday, May 10, 2011

registration frustration

In Ohio, your vehicle registration date coincides with your birthday month. For me, this means that my registration begins July 1 every year... which has proved nothing but a pain.

I bought my car, in Ohio, May 2009. This meant that I initially needed to pay the full July 1, 2008 - June 30, 2009 registration fee. What a way to bilk money, no? I had to pay a whole year's registration fee for less than 2months worth of registration. Stupid, Ohio.

I then had to pay the July 1, 2009 - June 30, 2010 registration fee. Ultimately, I don't have a problem with that one (I was in Ohio for the full year AND actually owned my car for the full year), but was annoyed in that it followed so closely from the previous registration payment.

I also registered my car, in Ohio, for the July 1, 2010 - June 30, 2011 period. This one was a bit of issue. See, I was moving to Maine July 15, 2010. My inclination was to register my car in Maine, seeing as that's where I would live, but neither Ohio nor Maine were very accommodating when it came to partial-year registrations. So I paid the entire years worth of registration in Ohio and didn't change anything over once here. Annoying, but a solution nonetheless.

However, now we're back to Ohio registration-time and I have no idea what to do. My Maine lease ends June 30 (as does the Ohio registration) and I don't know in which state I will next be living. To be fair, even if I did know that, I wouldn't be there in enough time to register before July 1. I don't want to not register my car, because you just know that's when I'm going to be pulled over and have to deal with those consequences (I'm very risk-adverse). The only option I see is to re-register my car in Ohio, but that just seems idiotic, especially since I won't even spend part of the registration period (e.g., 15 days) living there.

Advice? Recommendations? Solutions?

1 comment:

  1. I think I would just register in Ohio again. I think you will need to pay a lot more money and transfer a lot of things if you register in Maine. Then when you decide where you are moving just go ahead and switch to that state (unless it is only a one year position).

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