Photography courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
When it comes to gas and smokes, folks on the east bank of the Mississippi River know to head west to save money.
Missouri is No. 51 in cigarette taxes for all states and the District of Columbia, while Illinois ranks 17th highest.
For gasoline taxes, Missouri comes in 46th, at 17 cents a gallon, while Illinois is sixth highest, at 39 cents a gallon.
But if you want cheaper and easier license plates, Mo. is mo’ expensive and mo’ hassle. Illinois is cheaper and more lenient. Just ask the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Missouri residents cruising the Show-Me State with Land of Lincoln plates.
This tax and safety dodge has been going on for years, and it drives Greg Daly, collector of revenue for the City of St. Louis, up the wall.
“It drives everybody crazy,” Daly says. “There’s nothing worse. You walk out to your car every day, and your neighbor has Illinois plates on, and you think, 'Maybe they just moved in.' Well, six months later, they still have Illinois plates on.”
Six months is the legal deadline for getting new plates if you moved. Yet it doesn’t take much effort or intelligence to figure out that there hasn't been a mass exodus of Illinois folks lured to Missouri. There is no personal-property tax in Illinois, so plates with proxy addresses can save car owners money.
Illinois does require auto insurance, but it does not require safety inspections on vehicles. Emission tests are required in Franklin, Jefferson, St. Charles, and St. Louis counties, as well as the City of St. Louis in Missouri. In Illinois, many zip codes in Madison, Monroe, and St. Clair counties are exempted from emission tests, and other counties do not require them at all.
So claiming a bogus Illinois address can save Missourians money, time, and hassles by paying no personal-property tax, avoiding safety inspections, and possibly dodging emission tests.
Daly thinks that while Missouri is higher in this tax, Illinois makes up for it with other, higher taxes.
“We have personal-property tax,” Daly admits. “The kicker is, they don’t have a personal-property tax, but I guarantee you it’s someplace else.”
Yet if you don’t live in Illinois, you likely miss those other high taxes and fees that make up for a lack of personal-property tax. In a CNN ranking for overall taxes, Illinois ranked 29th highest, while Missouri ranked 39th.
Tom Vollmer, Daly’s deputy who has worked in the collector of revenue office for 23 years, says even though it’s a common complaint, there is no easy way to address the problem.
“This has been an ongoing complaint. Greg goes to these neighborhood meetings, and these people say, ‘How come my neighbor has Illinois plates on his car, and I’m sitting here paying personal-property tax? What’s the deal?’”
Often, the people with the Illinois plates are renters, and even if they own the property where they live, they could own property in Illinois.
“Everybody’s situation is different,” Vollmer says. “It could be a live-in boyfriend, they just moved here, it’s a company car, it’s this, or it’s that.”
Technically, if you summer in Missouri and winter in Florida, spending 51 percent of your time on your Florida property, you could drive with Florida plates. Yet there are few snowbirds who winter in Cahokia. The number of Missouri residents who live 51 percent of the time in Illinois does not explain the number of Illinois plates in Missouri.
Some attempts have been made to enforce the rules at housing projects, where it's clear that residents do not spend most of their time out of state. Still, if someone claims to have just moved, they have six months to change plates. Other alibis sometimes are harder to decipher.
Police who pull over cars check for registration and car insurance, but if a familiar dodge is offered by the driver to fog the police—that the driver just moved here, for instance—there is not much that a police officer has the time, patience, and ambition to do. It’s not a high priority.
“For every person you pull over, you’re going to get a different story,” says Vollmer. “If they have proper registration and they’re asked where there residence is, what are the police going to do?”
Add to the mix, Vollmer says, all of the college students from out of state, and it becomes even more difficult to determine who has legitimate reasons to have non-Missouri plates.
It is hard to estimate how many license-plate scofflaws are on the Missouri side of the metro area, just as it is hard to determine who is losing out on legitimate taxation and how much that amount is. For every dollar that is paid in personal-property tax in the city, 60 cents goes to the St. Louis Public Schools, 20 cents goes to the city, and the rest is divided up among other entities.
Cumulatively, the stakes likely are high for the city’s public schools, which are struggling financially and academically, and need the money. For each driver who pursues this option, the savings are small. High-end buyers of a Lexus or other expensive vehicles probably would not sweat the savings or avoidance of a safety inspection as much as low-income drivers of clunkers that might not pass safety or emission inspections.
Enforcement of ordinances meant to regulate vehicle registration and acquisition of license plates is labor-intensive, difficult, and costly in the short term. It’s unlikely this tax and inspection dodge is going to end anytime soon.
For once, Missouri will continue to look to Illinois for a bargain.
