Ruckus

When I bought my scooter, I was told that it was technically a motorcycle, since it went faster than about 25 miles an hour, so I should, technically, register it as such. If I were to claim it as a moped, I could probably get away with it. Probably. I figured, I have the license, I might as well get the plate and register it properly. The salesman was confused, somewhat, but let me go ahead and regsiter and pay taxes and get insurance. All on the up-and-up. Which was good, because not two months later my plates got stolen, and I got pulled over for riding a moped too fast, and was able to avoid the ticket by showing them my registration papers.

And now I have to pay excise tax on the bike to the city of Somerville. The RMV seems to think I have a $7000 motorcycle, and so the city billed me for taxes on a much nicer bike. When I called the assessor’s department to complain they told me I had to go by the sticker price even if I got a good deal on it. I said, that is the sticker price. They said, we have to go through the RMV to change the valuation, once we do that we can bill you the correct amount.

I called the RMV. They said, you have to go by the sticker price, and I said, that is the sticker price. They said, no, like what the dealer charges anybody. I said, that is the full list price for a new Honda NPS50: $1899. They were confused that I had bothered to register a moped the proper, legal way. Nobody does that.

We’ll see if I can eventually get this sorted out before I end up selling the scooter and buying a bike that’s actually worth what I’ll be taxed for.