In 1995 my car broke down and I borrowed my parents' car for about 2 years. Since the car was in their name, they refused to let me register it in DC. I never got confirmation from the DC goverment on my status and merely purchased a new car when I could, sending the borrowed car packing. Anyone know the law on that?

Nope, D.C. can only go after the on-street parkers.

Ahh, DCist, you're wrong. This post has endeared you to me. Mostly because I live on a stretch of Harvard that doesn't require a Zone 1 permit (despite the fact that it's a Snow Emergency Route, and the construction all around it will bring in lots of residents with cars). The entire block is full of out-of-state plates since they don't have to worry about daytime tickets.

I've often thought it would be a worthwhile project for some DMV staffers to hang out in parking lots around DC (e.g., Brentwood Home Depot, P Street Fresh Fields, Capitol Hill Safeway, etc.) and try to compare out-of-state registrations to names of folks who own property in the city.

With connectivity what it is these days, a creative DMV could start busting people left and right if they owned a house/condo in DC yet did not register their car there.

If the car is being used in DC, it should be registered (fees and insurance paid) here. Because some get away with not registering, those who do register wind up paying more.

what if you rent in dc but don't park on the street? i have a spot behind my house. do i still have to register my car? and do i have to get a dc licence?

I am all for making people avoiding paying DC taxes to get their cars registered, but what about rental cars? I rent from Hertz for work, sometimes a month at a time. Hertz doesn't tag any cars in DC from what I have seen. Most of the cars I rent have VA tags. I park on the street. Will I have to go to court on a regular basis to prove I haven't broken the law?

I got 3 tickets for having an "invalid permit" when i had the temporary police permit. The whole system is BS.

And I only had to pay $40 for the VA property tax.

Think of car registration in the frame of income tax. If you live in DC for over 183 days a year, then you are a DC resident and you pay taxes.

The logical, though less practiced chain of residency would include - DC voter, DC drivers' license, etc, etc. But thanks to modern life, Congress and the diplomatic corps those things get a little less certain.

There are people who are DC residents but have cars registered out of state, say in Deleware, since they may have a condo there - and insurance and car taxes are lower. There are two problems with this practice if you're keeping your car in DC: 1/insurance fraud with your home state (since the car you are insuring is not used primarily in that juridiction) and 2/inability to get a DC "zone parking sticker" since the car if not a DC car.

Also illegal is to possess two current drivers licenses from different states.

But then there are the exceptions. If you're a 9-month undergraduate college student, you don't have to register your car in DC - you can get reciprocity. If you're a Hill staffer working for your home state Congressman - you don't have to register your car in DC.

And if you're a diplomat, you're exempt from everything.

MPD and DC are right within their jurisdiction to weed out the tax and insurance cheats who don't want to get "Taxation Without Representation" plates -- those people cost the city revenue.

DC1974, go to DC.gov and look for the "Service Request Center", from there you can make a request for parking enforcement which may be what you are looking for. They try to get to those requests within 24 hours, so I think it might be your best bet.



You can also call the Service Center directly, but it just goes through the same system as the online request.

crisafer, you still have to register your car in DC if you live in the District, regardless of where you park. My roommate contested her ticket for non-registration by arguing that she was parked in a non-zoned spot, but the judge said it didn't matter. You can leave your car in the unzoned spot for more than two hours, though. DC's registration regs.

Reid is mistaken about the insignificance of the city's income from registrations. The excise tax required to change registration from another state to DC is 5% of the current value of the car, I believe. The increased income for the city if everyone really had to start switching their registation could be huge. (Only 400 cars worth $5000 raise $100K.)

People who want the privilege of driving/parking in a city should be willing to pay for it or decide to walk/bike/metro like the rest of us.

Also, if you're in the military you also don't have to register your car in DC (or any place you have been stationed). Military, students, congressional types add up to a fair amount of people which is why it might be more noticable in DC than other places.

They tested my window tinting and failed my car (I'm from florida, what can I say), but made me wait as my car went through the entire inspection process -- where they didn't test anything else.

Seems to me, the smart thing to do would be to test everything, and tell me all the problems at the same time. Instead, I was instructed to de-tint my windows and try again. Not to mention in typical dc city worker fashion, they were incrediably rude the entire time.

I've tried to register my car. I seriously have. I spent 4 or 5 hours doing it. The experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. And as far as district taxes, as a homeowner and resident of dc.. I can't even get clean water, I'm pretty sure the car tax isn't going to say, I donno, fix the pot holes.

The excise tax is a one time tax. Virginians pay close to that amount each year in ongoing taxes. So while it is not an insignificant amount, it's still not a goldmine exactly. And it's nothing compared with income, property, and sales taxes.

Also, there's a sense that people with out of state plates are taking spots away from residents. But if they really are not residents, then cracking down on registration violations wouldn't affect parking. Perhaps they're Virginians that drive and park at their significant other's house several nights a week. Without 24 hour zones, nothing can stop them from doing that.

And if they are residents, then they'll just register, DC's revenues will inch up barely a hair, and you'll still have trouble parking.

Oh man - glad to see this issue has finally come to light on DCist. My girlfriend, who lives and registers her car just across the river in VA, spends many a night at my place in DC. A few nights a week, she parks overnight in the zoned spaces where you technically don't need a permit if you park there between 6:30 pm and 8 am or for up to two hours at a time there. The meter people saw that she was in the spaces too many times a week, and gave her the tickets. So she had to take off of work for a morning to go to the DC DMV to prove she didn't live in DC! It's enough of a hassle for us DC citizens to go to our own DMV, let alone an out-of-towner. Now she got a 6 month "permit" (actually just a letter on DMV letterhead), that says she's allowed to park there. What does she get next week? Another $100 ticket right next to the permit in her window! Ridiculous. She is quite the catch for going through all of that though!

An obvious solution is being overlooked.

In December 2003 the Mayor's Parking Taskforce made certain recommendations designed to ease problems like this. However, it looks like no steps have been taken since then.

The problem is that NONE of the city's public parking spaces are reserved only for residents. It's nearly impossible to enforce the current regulations about unregistered vehicles because you can't really expect 16 city workers to police all the streets in the city.

However, if you could ticket EACH commuter vehicle that parked on the one side of each street that had been reserved for residents only, that'd clear up a lot of the problem.

I'm wondering what citizens can do to encourage the Council to implement the city's own December 2003 study suggestions as follow-

that in high parking areas that one side of the street be limited to residential parking all day every day,
and the other side have meters (actually, the mid-block electronic meter system) installed on the other side to better regulate the 2 hour visitor parking regulation

(see Page 26, exhbit 9 of the report referenced below).

http://www.ddot.dc.gov/ddot/frames.asp?doc=/ddot/lib/ddot/ParkingReport-Final.pdf

The problem cannot be addressed simply by better parking enforcement. We've tried that, and it doesn't solve the problem. The problem is that we allow too many non-DC vehicles on our streets.

The two-hour non-resident parking allowance is cumbersome - it requires two separate trips by parking enforcement. And often this isn't enough (the parking enforcement personnel are apparently incapable of sharing information from one personnel shift to another).

I think the perfect compromise solution is to do exactly what the Task Force recommended over two years ago. Reserve one side of the street for residents only. Keep the other side as is, but install mid-block electronic meters that the non-resident driver could easily use to mark the beginning of his or her two hour parking period.

Suburban locations like Arlington already have measures like this in place. But DC does not. And DC taxpayers are suffering because of it.

I've written to all the Councilmembers and the Mayor. So far I've gotten mostly platitudes and the blowoff.

This is all well and good, but I live on a street with unzoned parking. I'm a student who's decided to settle here for a while so I just paid the $300+ on my crappy car to register it because I received "warnings" on my car even though I was parked in an unzoned area (I know, I know. It's still city property and never fear, I was paying DC taxes through my various jobs). Then I come to find out that even though the zoned area starts about 100 yards up the street from me in EITHER DIRECTION, I can't get a zone parking sticker. I want to do things the right way, but I have to say I was REALLY angry that I went through all of the trouble to get this taken care of and the one nice perk that I thought would come out of it, i.e. not having to fight for the maybe thirty unzoned spots on my street and have the freedom to park anywhere in my neighborhood, didn't even work out. I don't mind registering, paying that "rent" or whatever, but I think this really sucks. We are, by the way, the ONLY unzoned block in my entire neighborhood and BECAUSE it's unzoned we have to fight for those spots with the people who live in the high rise across the street who don't want to pay extra for spots in that lot. I don't understand the logic behind this at all.

I wish they'd zone my street and tag and tow every out of towner or high-rise dweller who thinks they're getting away with something by hogging all of those spots. I realize now WHY this is so annoying to my neighbors. Or I wish they'd give us the stupid stickers.

wow, i finally agree with you dcist idiots.

To in the city,

http://app.ddot.
dc.gov/services_dsf
/rpp/index.asp?
ddotNav=|32397|

It'll take some work, but you can petition to have your block included inthe Residential Parking Permit Program.

Unless something has changed in the last two years, you DO NOT have to pay an excise tax when registering your car in D.C., if you've paid it where it was previously registered. My car was registered previously in Virginia, and when I got it registered in D.C. in October '04, I didn't have to pay any tax. Just the typical fees. I think it was around $150 total, for driver's license, inspection, etc.

I see some disagreement over whether the excise tax applies....anyone know for sure?

I bought a car in Virginia, and when I was calculating the cost of living in the District, the nice folks at DC DMV customer service told me that I wouldn't have to pay the excise tax.

Very frustrating that I had to call to find that out, though.

Ok. That's what I thought in the first place, but as mentioned, the DMV website didn't exactly confirm my belief that the excise tax wouldn't apply to these offenders.

So basically, a DC resident that doesn't register his car in DC is denying the city a whole $150 bucks or so, while in the meantime they're not squatting in a zoned spot all day, and they're not adding an incrimental burden on the DMV. I'm not saying that it's admirable to break the law in this way. I'm just saying that the righteous indignation over residents who don't register in DC is somewhat misplaced. It seems to stem more from frustration over parking (which cracking down on registration won't affect) or frustration that fellow residents are avoiding having to deal with the atrocious DMV.

Or maybe it's just all part and parcel with DC residents' compulsion to feel righteously indignant about something or someone at all times.

A.J. just proves the point- you're not here to stay. You can't just come in, use DC services and then leave. They're not free. That's why this city sucks.

If people came in, registered to vote here, got on jury duty, and were counted as residents, maybe this place wouldn't suck so much.

We don't want you to vote in your hometown. All of you who vote in your hometown are the ones who didn't vote Marion Barry out soon enough. There's a point to all of it.

Citizen - I guarantee you you don't pay nearly the taxes a lot of us longtime DC residents pay. Especially if you don't own your residence in DC, which you probably don't.

Yes, we do have more of a right to street parking than you do.

And Kate pointed out that you are shirking your duties as a citizen - things like voting in DC, serving on jury duty, etc.

So, yes, we do have more of a right to street parking than you do.

Register your vehicle and act like an actual citizen of where you live.

Wow, there are a lot of crazy assumptions being thrown around:

1: Jury duty, or at least being called to jury duty, has nothing to do with dmv registration. I've known plenty of people who have been called to DC jury duty without ever taking a step into DC's DMV.

2: If you rent a apartment, you're paying real estate taxes. Not directly, of course, but it's certainly covered by your rent payment (and besides, does someone "deserve" a spot more because they pay more taxes? That statement has some pretty awful consequences)

3: Low jury duty response leads to more acquitals? What? First of all, who says we have a low conviction rate? Second, where is there any evidence that a low jury duty response even would lead to more acquittals? Are you saying that only black people respond to jury duty and they're more likely to let one of "their own" off? Do you have any evidence to support that insinuation?

4: How are these people to blame for ludicrous losers in office due to them not doing their civil duty to vote? You have a civil duty to vote in November, but do you have a civil duty to register as a Democrat? Because that is the only way you can have any effect on those ludicrous losers.

5. Again, registering to vote has nothing to do with the DMV (although you can register to vote through the DMV, you don't have to go through the DMV to register).

Reid:

Your comments are inaccurate in several ways.

According to the DC Courts website, jurors are selected from lists of registered District of Columbia voters, persons who have obtained driver's licenses or identification cards from the Department of Motor Vehicles, records provided by the D.C. Department of Tax and Revenue, and public assistance rolls.

So your suggestion that registering your vehicle (which requires a DC license in most circumstances... and once you get a DC license again in most instances you must register your vehicle in DC) has nothing to do with jury pools is just factually wrong.

When you rent an apartment, you are not paying DC real estate taxes, certainly not directly and in most cases not indirectly. Apartment rental rates are set by two things in DC - market rates and rent control. Market rates have actually been down for some time, not keeping pace with the massive increases in property taxes most landlords pay. Setting market rate has actually very little to do with actual costs involved. As for rent control, that antiquated system in theory will adjust to include costs of taxes, but in reality the system is so mired in inefficiency and inaccurate information that there is no direct relationship. I own apartments under rent control in DC, and I can tell you that my recent massive property tax hikes did not affect my rent control ceilings or the rents charged.

And, yes, paying taxes versus not paying taxes is a perfectly valid basis for determining who has a 'right' to street parking. Legally, no. But ethically, yes.

Incidentally, a lot of those that won't get DC licenses or register their vehicles here are also actively cheating DC out of income taxes and any other local fees. They know darn well that DC's local tax rate is usually higher than their home state, so many do all they can to not pay DC taxes. Again, their rationale is that they 'aren't from DC'. Yet, they have no problem using DC services.

People skipping out on jury duty by not having DC licenses, not registering to vote, etc., has a very direct impact on crime in DC.

Yes, I'm saying that predominately black juries and predominately poor or uneducated juries in DC often allow defendants to walk when a predominately white or predominately middle class or better educated jury probably wouldn't. Is there hard evidence to back this up? Probably not. But anyone that doesn't believe this is the case needs to actually go sit on a DC jury.

It's no secret that many juries in DC are comprised of mostly poor or lower middle class blacks (often elderly women), or at a bare minimum their presence is vastly overrated. Any lawyer will tell you this - these jurors in DC often acquit black defendants even if the evidence is overwhelming. That is , a lot of these particular jurors just refuse to believe that young black men are capable of committing crimes and/or they actually believe that it's some sort of conspiracy against young black men, so they often aquit regardless of the evidence.

There's also an education factor. DC jury pools often draw from the poorly educated who now have an unrealistic view of how evidence actually works. Lawyers actually have a term for this: CSI DC. That is, poorly educated jurors have seen too many episodes of CSI and are now requiring CSI-like evidence before they will convict in DC. In the real world most trials don't involve such fantasy evidence.

DC juries do not represent the city as a whole, and that results in a miscarriage of justice.

Nobody said you have a civic duty to register to vote Democrat. But you do have a civic duty to register to vote. If all the people living here but refusing to vote locally would actually vote, there's a good chance we'd see a change of leadership in DC.

I stand by my original premise: If you refuse to be a local citizen, then you have no right to bitch about anything in DC.

And, yes, registering your vehicle locally is a part of actually being a local citizen.

There are also practical reasons for registration. If there is a problem involving your unregistered vehicle DC police have to contact your home state. That home state will of course not have your DC residence info. Why should local police and other officials have to go through all this extra effort just because people want to avoid legally registering their vehicles?

If your vehicle is rarely in DC, I can understand not registering. But if you live here and are regularly parking in DC, you need to pony up and act like a citizen.

I have no problem paying for parking, but why can't they just charge a fee rather than make everyone change their licensing/plates/insurance, etc??? It's an enormous pain in the ass. I'm happy to fork over a nice chunk of change to the city for parking, but I'm not going to be here long enough to go through all that hassle.

Oh give me a break! All you have to do is go to dc.gov and all the information you need to register your car is easily found.