I'm so broke!

[HYHYBT]

Georgia used to issue everyone's tag for the current calendar year, leaving until I think May 1 of the new year to renew. Also, the tag belonged to the car, not the driver. So if you bought a new car near the end of the year, you still got the old tag; if you bought a used car early in the year, you might or might not have to pay depending on whether the old owner had done it.

Obviously, this made the tag office crowded in late April. So they changed to an inherently unfair system: the exact same, except that your due date was the end of any of the first four months, depending on your last name. Unfair because it meant some had only one month, while others had four. Then they switched to going from one birthday to the next, and eventually to the tag staying with the person rather than the car.

[smileyeagle1021]

All these renewal schemes seem so weird to me... in both Nevada and Utah the initial registration is due within a month of purchasing the car, and then the renewal is due each year by the end of the month in which you initially registered it (so, if you registered it in August, then every year in August you need to renew).

[Andara Bledin]

Count me among those who find the way other states run their registration renewals to be arcane and bizarre.

California, like Nevada and Utah, requires that the registration be transfered within a month of sale, and then it expires at the end of a given month every year, although I'm have no idea how that month is decided, only that every month is represented.

Also, the plates and tags stay with the car for as long as it runs, unless a person requires that they be replaced with new ones, in which case the old ones are turned in. Situations like what happens in Pennsylvania with the whole swapping of plates back and forth just seems chaotic and a colossal waste of time and energy for everybody involved.

^-.-^

[Tanasi]

In TN it's the month of purchase but the current car was bought in May but tags don't expire until 30 Sept. and that's because I transferred the tags from the old car to this one. Come to think about it I also transferred the tag from the previous car to this last one. So I've had this tag on three different cars, Mmmmmmm...
(The middle one was totaled by the insurance company because it was beat near to death in a very very bad hail storm.)
I have bad luck where hail is involved.

[protege]

Also, the plates and tags stay with the car for as long as it runs, unless a person requires that they be replaced with new ones, in which case the old ones are turned in. Situations like what happens in Pennsylvania with the whole swapping of plates back and forth just seems chaotic and a colossal waste of time and energy for everybody involved.

Pennsylvania's law isn't too bad. Plates can either stay with the car when it's sold, or they can get transferred to another vehicle.

For example, when I re-titled my MG last year, I wanted to keep the old-style classic plate on it. You don't see the purple/silver plate that often, and the car had worn it since it was bought in 1980. To separate it from its plate would have been losing part of its history. Here, classic plates don't expire--since my dad was the 'original' owner, all I had to do was sign some paperwork, present photos of the car, and pay the transfer fee.

New cars are different. When I bought my Toyota in 2007, I had the dealer simply transfer the plate from the Mazda I'd traded in. Again, fill out the form, they handled the rest...and I didn't have to pay a thing. When my new car came in, the plate was simply swapped over and I had a temporary registration card, until the new one came in the mail.

Here, we get stickers for our license plates. For example, the 5-13 one on my car means that it's good until the last day of next May. About a month before that day, I'll get a letter in the mail reminding me to pay the $36 renewal fee. Either I can write out a check, or do it online. In a few days, I'll get new registration card and a new sticker for the plate. No such sticker is required for 'classic' or 'antique' plates--they don't expire, and don't have to be renewed every year.

[Tanasi]

For my Dad's antique 47 Dodge pickup we search high and low and finally found matching front and rear 1947 TN plates. I restored them to like new and we then put them on the truck. The state issued antique plate is behind the seat but we do not have to display it on the truck and if a LEO asks we have to show him the issued plate. Our antique tags do not expire, they're good for as long as you own the car/truck.
For my 1970 Ranchero I have the OE plate as the next year the state issued a new plate. When I declare it to be an antique I'll put that plate on it and also since I have the OE registration it will be my official Antique plate.