TEXAS, USA — Heads up Texans! You might see a major change the next time you buy a car. A new Texas Bill signed by Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday, June 12 will soon make paper license plates a thing of the past.
House Bill 718, introduced by Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, lets car dealerships keep metal plates on hand for those who buy vehicles, eliminating the need for temporary paper plates.
The bill aims to make it harder for criminals to fake tags when committing crimes.
"Everybody's familiar with the catalytic converters," Don Ringler Automotive Sales Manager, John Haun, said. "Believe it or not, paper plate theft is a problem as well. People steal those and use them on their own cars or sell them to people that need them."
"I've seen it on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist where they're trying to sell paper tags," Tax Assessor/Collector for Bell County, Shay Luedeke, further explained. "They're making a lot of money off of it too. I think in terms of statewide like 200 million dollars a year."
In Dec. of 2022, the state redesigned paper tags with more complex and secure designs including numerous additional data points and security features, making it harder to fake.
That didn't stop criminals though, resulting in the design of HB 718 to take the law one step further. However, the process won't be easy.
"It's a huge undertaking to get rid of all the paper tags," Luedeke said. "We not only have just the buyer's tags, but you also have the 30 day temp tags that you can get from this office. You also have the one trip permits that you get from this office. The only paper that's going to remain after all this is said and done is the 72 hour and 144 hour permits and those are for commercial. You won't see those on private vehicles."
Although the Department of Motor Vehicles are still establishing what the process will look like, there are vague ideas of how this will all work for car dealerships.
"One of the meetings that I was in with the Department of Motor Vehicles, they mentioned that they were going to package all the metal plates up for our dealers and send them to our offices," Luedeke said. "The dealers will have to come to the county tax office and pick up their initial allotment of plates. They may get only three or four weeks worth. We don't know what that is because the DMV hasn't developed those rules and processes."
As far as buyers go, lawmakers hope they don't have to wait three or four days before their title is transferred.
"We're still trying to get it where you go and buy a car you can still get it the same day," Luedeke said.
The president elect of the Tax Assessor Collector Association of Texas also believes another perk of this bill is if you trade a vehicle in, you can transfer the current plate to your new car.
For those not in favor of the bill, lawmakers and supporters of the bill say it's important for dealerships and buyers to note the bill does not take effect until July 1, 2025.
"The reason we extended that deadline is so that we would have another legislative session to make any law changes that we need to because the first year and a half, DMV is going to be creating rules," Luedeke said. "We're going to be looking at all these processes. If we come across something that we need to fix by law, then we can do that next session."
"With this new bill, it looks like you'll be able to leave here with metal plates right out of the gate, which sounds great to me," Haun said.