this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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When they tried this last year it was scrapped because there was no practical way to collect it. Are we going to have a national car registry? That would take more money than it would collect. If they just ask a question on tax filing, I'm just going to lie.
How are you Americans doing car registration? As someone from another country it sounds a little bit crazy to not have a national car registry. Is this on the state level? And if someone from Texas is caught speeding in Arizona, police has to as there for the ID of the owner? Or is there no registry at all? And why shouldn't states be able to collect a tax from their citizens?
Cars and drivers are registered on the state level, yes. There's an agreement that licenses from every state are valid in every other state, and infractions in any state are prosecuted by the jurisdiction in which it happens. There is no national registry, no. States can (and do) collect taxes and registration fees from drivers who reside in that state, but they don't typically collect on behalf of the federal government.
The US is a fake country. States have a massive amount of power, they control vehicle registration, sales tax, school programs... the federal government might as well not exist. The same applies to other so-called countries like Germany.
Germany btw has a central car and driving permit registration.
There's a reason cops ask for license and registration.
My understanding is that this time they want to force the states to collect the fee on behalf of the federal government, with the threat that they'll withhold federal funding if the states don't do it. I don't see how they could possibly enforce that either, though.
I dunno how this works, but I'd assume this national car registry already exists at the DMV because you have to register your car to drive it, no?
No. The registries are all state-level, though many states do allow other states to query their systems.
Oh I forgot they were state level, I'd guess Congress could either tell states to give them the list of electric cars or ask the states to do the deed for them. I guess that could be a hard task if every system is very different. Not sure.