An east-central Oklahoma legislator has filed a measure that would allow Oklahoma car, truck, van and motorcycle owners to renew their motor vehicle registration for more than just one year.
House Bill 1091 by Rep. Donnie Condit, D-McAlester, was endorsed Thursday by the House Appropriations and Budget Committee, and earlier by its Revenue and Taxation Subcommittee. The bill has been placed on the legislative calendar for consideration by the full House sometime within the next two weeks.
HB 1091 provides that “at the owner’s discretion” he/she could renew a non-commercial motor vehicle’s registration annually, or for two years or three. The fees for multi-year registration “shall be equivalent to the total of fees that would otherwise be assessed … if the owner had elected to renew the registration on an annual basis,” the bill stipulates.
“I think there are some Oklahomans who, as a matter of convenience, would prefer to register their vehicles once every two or three years instead of every 12 months,” Condit explained.
While the option of multiple-year registrations might shift an indeterminate amount of revenue to another fiscal year, no change in total registration fees would occur, House staff concluded.
Almost 4,070,000 vehicles and trailers were registered with the Oklahoma Tax Commission in Fiscal Year 2014, generating $622.8 million, ledgers show. The vehicles included 2.96 million cars and pickups, nearly 151,000 farm trucks, more than 129,000 motorcycles, more than 16,000 motor homes, plus 72,500 travel trailers.
