Central Plate Distribution - What does that mean for you as a dealer?

Beginning January 1, 2025, all Utah license plates will be centrally distributed to vehicle registered owners. This means that all license plates will be mailed directly to the customer through the US Postal Service.

No inventory of plates will be available in DMV offices, including the Utah State Tax Commission office and all third party DMV partners such as IDS. What does this mean for you as a dealer?

IDS will still be able to process all your paperwork for the customer that just purchased a vehicle from your dealership, but the plate will be distributed to the customer in a new process. When you bring paperwork to our office, the paperwork will be completed as usual in the DMV system. A license plate will be assigned to the customer and registration will be created at that time. As a dealer you have a couple options to get this registration to the customer. You can allow the system to mail the registration to customer. The customer will get this registration within a couple days of being issued in the system. The plate will be entered into the license plate queue for printing and will be printed anywhere from 10 days to 60 days depending on the work in the license plate queue. When registration is provided for the customer there will also be a DMV temporary permit that will be provided. The permit length will be a 60 day permit. This is provided to cover the time while the new license plate is being printed and being mailed to the customer.

IDS will be able to provide two options for the temporary permit and registration. When these two items are generated in the system, you can elect to have registration and temporary permit mailed to the customer, or you can elect to have IDS email the registration and temporary permit to you the dealer to deliver to your customer. Emailing these documents to you proved an opportunity for additional follow up with the customer while also providing an electronic copy of registration and temporary permit to the customer. If the customer loses either of these two documents, you could email them a second copy or they could reference it in the original email you provided to them.

Here are a few items and frequestly asked questions to be aware of as you are working through these changes beginning January 1st.

·      Does this only start for cars sold beginning January 1st? It doesn’t matter when the car is sold. These changes are based on when the vehicle is entered into the DMV system for title and registration processes. If paperwork is in a DMV office or IDS office before January 1, but not processed until after January 1, then the new process will be used for this customer.

·      Are registration fees changing due to this change in process? Registration fees tend to go through changes each year. We will continue to see this again in 2025, however there will be an additional change not seen before when registering a vehicle. There will be an additional mailing charge included in the registration and assessment fees paid for the vehicle. This is to cover the cost of mailing the plate to the customer.

·      Address for mailing the plate. The plate will be mailed to the address on the TC-656 form. Be sure addresses are correct for customers on paperwork, including any needed apartment numbers, suites, etc. All undeliverable plates will be returned to the Utah State Tax Commission (210 N 1950 W). Customers will then need to contact DMV or through a request with IDS you can verify customer mailing addresses and we can request to have the plate mailed again.

·      Can I have the plate mailed to the dealership? If you would like to have the plate mailed to the dealership, you can request the plate mailed to the dealership as a one-time mailing location for the plate. This will allow the plate to arrive at your dealership in the mail where you can provide it to the customer or install it on the vehicle keeping  your license plate frame on the vehicle.

·      My customer didn’t receive a license plate, now what? If you customer reaches out to you about not receiving their new license plate, you can contact IDS and we can let you know in the system if the plate has been mailed or still in process. If it has been mailed and returned due to “inability to deliver due to address” we can verify the address with you and request the plate be mailed again.

·      Temporary Permits. The temporary permit issued with the registration does not replace the MVED temporary permit. You should continue to issue these for your customer. The new DMV temporary permit does not have a cost to you or the customer and you do not need to keep track of these permits for permit audit purposes. Please keep track of MVED temporary permits as audits will continue each year.

·      What about specialty plates such as black plates, collegiate plates, etc? All of the specialty plates will be handled the same way through central distribution. We have seen this process already in action with the current Historical Plates (i.e black & white plates). All of the Historical Plates are already mailed to the customer. They are currently taking a few weeks to get to the customer, so we will suspect that the regular centrally distributed plates will be similar.

·      One plate vs two plates? Beginning January 1, the DMV will also only offer the license plate with one plate, not two. A law last year eliminated the need to have two plates on a vehicle, so beginning January 1, only one license plate will be provided to the customer.  

As these changes go into effect, please be patient. We know there will be many issues as the new process starts. We are working closely with DMV and MVED to help minimize issue and make you aware of them as soon as possible.