<VV> Va inspections a good deal and old car house bill

[Tony Underwood]

At 03:03 PM 1/12/2007, mhicks130 at cox.net wrote:
> >> ********************************************
> >snip<
> > Instead of jerking vintage car hobbyists
> > around, they should be working on ways to cut spending so they won't
> > have to be worrying about raising taxes.
>
>
>The problem isn't the typicaly car hobbyist.  It's people who are 
>abusing the antique plates to drive around in crappy cars without 
>having to pay annual registration fees or personal property taxes.


The commonwealth isn't gonna be shorted that much by not collecting a 
yearly registration fee on antique vehicles, nor are property taxes 
on older cars an issue in the first place because taxes on older cars 
in VA are minimal at best, regardless of the registration.    It just 
happens that antiques are tax-exempt.   But then again, taxes on a 
regular registration vehicle that's ten years old or more aren't very 
much at all, thanks to Gov Gilmore.

So, the rant over antique vehicles is about something else, unless of 
course the sponsors of the proposal are simply elitist jerks looking 
for every dime they can find anywhere.


>And it turns out, for a while a cop couldn't get owner information 
>from calling in antique plates due to a snafu at the DMV computer system.


Must have been a local situation...  for a while I was getting 
stopped at least once or twice a month for not having an inspection 
sticker or a city sticker on the 'Vairs.   Seems the police hadn't 
bothered to get current with the regs.   Antique vehicles in VA 
aren't required to be inspected and since they're tax exempt, they 
don't have to display a city sticker which is actually nothing but a 
tax stamp.


>Supposedly that's been fixed but for a while, some of societie's 
>questionable people were using this to aid in their illegal activities.


...this is a reason to, at this time, try to jerk car hobbyists 
around?   Seems the majority of the errors in the system have been 
weeded out by now.


>The big problem is short sighted, nincompoop legistlators who 
>constantly want to throw the baby out with the bathwater because 
>they're either too lazy or too dim to learn what the real problem is 
>and try to figure out a good solution.  The other bill I mentioned 
>was essentially written by car hobbyiests in collaboration with DMV 
>representatives.  It should be the winner if any but you never know in VA.


Makes one wonder now... what with governor Timmy who never met a tax 
he didn't like.

Here's hoping the vintage vehicle laws remain the same, 
unchanged.    And common sense should demonstrate what is and is not 
a bona fide antique vehicle, and a 25 year old ragged-out Caprice is not.


tony..