by Tyler Arnold
The Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles is refunding drivers after a misreading of the law led the agency to wrongly charge more than 2,700 truck drivers with highway use fees.
“[The] DMV discovered that an interpretation of the 2020 highway use fee legislation led to the system being programmed in a way that included some lighter trucks in a category with cars that are subject to the highway use fee,” Jessica Cowardin, a spokesperson for the Virginia DMV told The Center Square.
Virginia’s transportation budget is primarily funded through the state’s gasoline tax, but a 2020 law added a highway use fee for electric vehicles and other fuel-efficient vehicles to ensure those motorists also contribute to the transportation fund. This law prevents drivers who use gasoline-powered vehicles from being the sole source of revenue for such projects.
However, the state law provides an exemption for large trucks that weigh between 6,000 pounds and 10,000 pounds. When the DMV was collecting the fees, it initially misread the law, which led to drivers with 6,000-pound vehicles receiving the fee and only provided the exemption for trucks that weighed 6,001 or more. Cowardin said the DMV’s legal team reevaluated the language of the code and determined that the exemption should have begun for trucks 1 pound lower, exactly at 6,000. The DMV has notified drivers who need to receive a refund and have since fixed the program to ensure charges are correctly applied for future registrations.
“We have reviewed the code with our legal team and determined the language ‘between’ should be inclusive of the endpoints, 6,000 and 10,000,” Cowardin said. “We have updated the programming and reviewed our records to determine how many vehicles weighing exactly 6,000 pounds have been affected.”
The DMV determined that there were 2,769 truck owners who will need to receive a refund. The total refund depends on how many years for which the driver renewed his registration. Many of the excess fees are only about $5 per truck, but some drivers will need to receive refunds up to $40 if they renewed their registration for several years.
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Tyler Arnold reports on Virginia and West Virginia for The Center Square. He previously worked for the Cause of Action Institute and has been published in Business Insider, USA TODAY College, National Review Online and the Washington Free Beacon.
Photo “At the DMV” by Micah Sittig. CC BY 2.0.
