Drivers get chance to skip tax on monorail

State officials have temporarily stopped requiring drivers to list their primary residence when they renew their annual car licenses, a move that could again lead to evasion of the Seattle monorail tax.

The state Department of Licensing put the requirement in place in late April, largely at the behest of the Seattle Monorail Project. It was designed to prevent drivers from registering their cars out of the city and avoiding the tax imposed to pay for the West Seattle-to-Crown Hill line voters narrowly approved in 2002. The tax can amount to hundreds of dollars annually for a newer vehicle.

A monorail official said yesterday the temporary change should have little effect on long-term finances for the $1.7 billion project, which had seen its revenue initially come in at a third less than projections.

The requirement will be reimposed in November, after the licensing department completes a computer upgrade. The department stopped requiring the information of vehicle owners at about mid-month after many drivers demanded to be allowed to add a mailing address in addition to their primary home address, department spokesman Brad Benfield said.

The suspension of the requirement puts Seattle's monorail back in the position it was in before the department began requiring listing of primary residences -- open to the possibility that some vehicle owners will try to evade the 1.4 percent Seattle monorail tax by registering their cars outside the city.

Asked about the temporary suspension of the requirement, Seattle Monorail Project Finance Director Jonathan Buchter said he is "OK with whatever (the state department) needs to do to make sure the rule gets implemented."

Buchter said he doesn't think the change "will have any impact (on monorail finances), because I assume people are going to follow the rule" and list their primary residence.

Even if people try to evade the tax in the meantime, "in the worst-case scenario, it means I wait five months to collect the tax" because even would-be tax evaders will have to list their primary residence and pay it again in November. "Over a 40-year financing program (for the monorail) that's peanuts," he said.

Benfield said the department's computers aren't yet set up to accept both a residence address and a mailing address. The system will be able to do this by early November, when an upgrade is completed and the vehicle database is moved from the 1970s-vintage system into a new one.

In the meantime, the department will permit vehicle owners to have vehicle registrations and other material mailed to an address different than their primary residence.

Legislators had also contacted the department asking that it allow drivers to put both a primary-residence and a mailing address on their record, he said. The primary-residence requirement also drew objections from Sen. Jim Horn, R-Mercer Island, the chairman of the state Senate Transportation Committee, where a bill to add a primary-residence listing requirement into state law died last session.

The department, at the request of Gov. Gary Locke, subsequently imposed a rule putting the requirement in place.

After the rule was announced last month many drivers protested that they want to receive licensing information at a mailing address different from their home address, such as a postal box or mail drop.

"We were actually kind of surprised at the number of people who have taken steps to eliminate mail delivery to their homes, removing their mailboxes and having (mail) sent somewhere else," Benfield said. "The primary reasons we heard were mail theft and identify theft."

He could not say how many drivers demanded the ability to list a second address.

Benfield emphasized that the primary-residence requirement "is not going away" permanently and will be imposed again in November when the computer switchover is scheduled to be complete.

Historically, the monorail has estimated that before the department's rule was adopted about 3 percent of the car-owning residents of Seattle, representing 5 percent of the value of vehicles registered in the city, evaded the tax by registering vehicles at addresses outside the city.

Buchter said the monorail already has noticed more one-time evaders starting to register their cars at city addresses.

For the first three months of this year, the monorail estimated it would receive $2.266 million per month in motor-vehicle excise tax income. It received almost 97 percent of that in those months. Buchter said in April it received 99 percent of that amount.

"Being 99 percent on your budget is extraordinarily good," he said.

P-I reporter Larry Lange can be reached at 206-448-8313 or larrylange@seattlepi.com

Add P-I transportation headlines to