Didn't know it was a thing, until I found a parking ticket on my car windshield for having an "unregistered" vehicle on a public street. Sure enough I go to the rear license plate and lo and behold the year on mostly intact exposed annual tab still on the plate was for 2019! Some miscreant scraped off 4 yrs of tabs for the '2023' that had been on top. Spent the morning at the license bureau getting a replacement tab and registration. According to the gal there tab theft is a pretty common occurrence these days; all it takes is a relative sharp razor blade though she said that it helps to have a THICK stack of old tabs under the one they want to slice into. So guys who have owned their cars for ages beware.

Lesson learned, so when I got home I finished the job and scraped away the remaining annual tabs to bare plate, THEN applied the new replacement. Using a glass scraping tool I was a bit shocked at how easily those tabs came off the plate, albeit a thief would have to work more slowly to keep the desired tab intact.

Now I've got to get a package together to contest the ticket. Actually I'm not sure if I'm more annoyed at the thief or parking enforcement; when I first looked at the plate and the old exposed 2019 tab, it was pretty clear than the thief DIDN'T make it a completely clean cut as there was a chunk of subsequently applied tabs still stuck to the 2019 sticker. I dunno...maybe it was late in the day and he/she was ready to knock off work and just had ONE MORE TICKET to make some shift quota, but it seemed pretty damn obvious there HAD been some overlaying tabs that were on top of that 2019 tab.

To hell if I'm going to just let it go and pay the $47 that they want. They'll get a nice pack of pictures to go with that ticket with the contesting box marked. Oh the annoyance at the time need to be spent fixing this, but I'd be MORE annoyed knowing the municipality made off with equally ill-gotten gains gleaned from the thievery of some lowlife who can't afford his own car registration.

Like a lot of things, they have to squeeze those paying for more $$, hence registration fees go up.

It should be fairly simple, a few pictures, your paper ‘proof’ of yearly registration.

They'll fuck with you, because they know you'll play the game, meanwhile they let the empty bags run amok around here.

Some people remove all the old tags, then slice the new one with a blade after putting it on the plate so that it can't be pulled off in one piece.

I was once advised by a NH State Trooper NOT to stack up the registration stickers on my License Plate (I had approx. 10 years worth on there at the time) as miscreants have been known to remove them in order to avoid attracting attention to their 'unregistered vehicle(s)'!

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slice the new one with a blade after putting it on the plate so that it can't be pulled off in one piece.

Been doing that for years. Slice in an X with a razor.

^^^In NH they come 'pre-sliced' with an anti theft/anti-removal 'X' from the DMV...The problem is that if you've got multiples stacked up on there, they can be removed quickly w/o messing with the valid one on top, and easily applied to an unregistered vehicle at another location.

They read the serial numbers on them here. Even if it's stolen, it comes up for the original registrar.

Tag readers even show your insurance status. It's why criminals are using fake lot tags now.

You see a car with temp tags from a buy here pay here lot, rest assured they are un licensed, uninsured and have a, if not multiple warrants.

NC tabs have the license plate number printed on them, so the desirability of stolen ones isn't high. Stickers that didn't match the license plate would be pretty obvious proof of theft.

This year we were issued new plates along with the sticker, but in the coming years I'll be more judicious in making sure the old sticker is removed before putting on a new one.

I always remove the previous sticker (not always easy) before placing the new sticker on, I also use a razor to score an x on the new one, as well as try to burnish the new sticker on the license plate. I'm not sure when it started, but Kansas now includes the license tag number on the sticker. Unless you get very close you won't see it, though. We used to have people occasionally merely cut off the corner of the tag where the sticker is located with a pair of tin snips, I don't know how prevalent that is anymore. Something I have found odd is some people will have stickers at various places on their tag, the only place the sticker is supposed to be is the upper right corner. Maybe they're showing that they have previously registered the car, I dunno. I do know that you can receive a citation for it, if the officer is so inclined to be bothered.

TX went to a windshield sticker, I imagine partly to combat this, plus we use printed not stamped plates, so there's no impression for the tag on the plates anymore.

It's been a windshield sticker for as long as I've been driving (2001).

Sounds like Texas is following what they do in the UK. Plates are just the reg#, the tax disk proving you are paid up goes in the windshield.

Several years ago I recall the registration was of big interest to thieves. I wonder if this ties into it or that was a different scam.

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the thievery of some lowlife who can't afford his own car registration.

They can afford it. They just spend it on cigs, booze, and drugs. I have been removing mine before I put on the new one for years. Indiana also precuts their stickers.

Know what I'll be doing next registration time.

TX used to crosscut the inspection stickers. Hated scraping those off the windshield.
Luckily, we've since eliminated those & it's tied to the registration now.

I generally ask for new plates because the price is the same as a sticker anyway.

There's not much incentive to steal registration stickers here. They're printed with the original plate number, and running a plate will return the registration status anyway, regardless of whether you slapped a stolen/fake sticker on it or not.

It might prevent someone from running your plate in the first place, if they're purely on the lookout for expired tags and running just the ones who are noticeably expired. But that's a pretty small benefit.

As mentioned above, simply having perpetual temp tags (either fake or from a shady dealer) is a way easier/less risky route for the scrotebags to take.

South Dakota mandates that all old stickers be removed before applying new ones.

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Originally posted by SigSAC:
Some people remove all the old tags, then slice the new one with a blade after putting it on the plate so that it can't be pulled off in one piece.

We had our entire rear license plate stolen off of our car parked in our driveway.
I used theft resistant bolts to secure the new plate.