Even if you've only spent a brief amount of time in St. Louis, you've likely seen more than a handful of cars with expired temporary tags. KMOX's Debbie Monterey looked into why expired tags are so ubiquitous in the state.
Doug Smith is the president of the Missouri Automobile Dealers Association in Jefferson City. He told KMOX that anywhere from 15-20% of new car purchasers are driving on expired temporary tags.
Those vehicles are unregistered and unlicensed, and the dealer who sold the car is still on the title. Plus, keeping the expired tags means the buyer has yet to pay lots of money in state and local taxes.
The Missouri Department of Revenue didn't have the information to provide the information on how much money the state is losing, but according to Smith, "There's an esitmtaed anywhere between $20-40 million in uncollected sales tax on new vehicle purchases every year."
Missouri is one of just a handful of states where new car owners are on the honor system to go pay their sales taxes at the DMV to get their new plates. Most states do titling and registration at the point of sale at the dealership.
The cost of taxes when drivers do got the DMV to get all that done can be thousands of extra dollars. It's likely that some people either can't afford the payments -- or, maybe they just don't care to do it, since they don't see many people getting in trouble for having expired tags.
But eventually, there will be a new computer system is on the way that can get everything done at once. Smith said the current system is about 35 years old and "does a fraction of what it needs to do." But he adds that it will probably be at least 3 years before it all gets implemented.
St. Charles mayor Dan Borgmeyer said his police department will start pulling people over who have expired temporary tags, but no other departments have said if they will follow suit.
Listen to the full report here: