Proposal 3: Changes to motor vehicle licence and registration fees

Summary of Proposal 3

There are around 5.5 million motor vehicles in New Zealand, and around 300,000 additional new and used vehicles registered annually.

‘Registration’ only happens once for most vehicles, when they’ve arrived in New Zealand and are first going to be used on the road. It’s a one-off fee to add a vehicle’s details to the Motor Vehicle Register (MVR). When the vehicle is added to the register, Waka Kotahi issues number plates for it.

Vehicles also need a current licence, which is the small label that sits in the bottom left-hand side of your windscreen – commonly called a ‘rego’. To get a rego, a vehicle must have a current Warrant of Fitness (WoF) or Certificate of Fitness (CoF) and it must be registered.

A vehicle must have a valid number plate (be registered) and have a valid vehicle licence (have a rego) to be driven on our roads.

Motor vehicle licence and registration services are provided through a variety of channels, including online, mail, email, phone, and over-the-counter at specified agents.

Why are we proposing these changes?

Making fees fair

The Funding and Fees review found that 97% of revenue collected has been coming from fees paid by driver licence holders and vehicle owners, who’ve been subsidising regulatory activities in other areas.

Correcting fees

We’re proposing to introduce new fees for services we’ve previously provided without charge because we didn’t have a way to recover those costs when the services were set up.

We’re increasing fees where the cost of providing the service is greater than the fee paid for it, and decreasing fees where the cost of providing the service is less than the fee paid for it.

We want to make sure we accurately recover the costs of providing regulatory services.

How and when would changes take place?

Changes would be introduced through new regulations, or amendments to Land Transport (Motor Vehicle Registration and Licensing) Regulations 2011 – particularly Part 8 and Schedule 5 with effect on or before October 2023.

Tables – Fees affected by Proposal 3

There are 69 fees in this section. They are summarised in the table below.

Proposed fees in the following tables assume that additional government funding is secured through the use of section 9(1A) of the Land Transport Management Act 2003 (outlined in Proposal 1). You will notice a column showing the estimated impact if s9(1A) is unsuccessful.

Table 5: Proposed new registration fees (GST inclusive)

Table 6: Proposed registration fees that go up (GST inclusive)

Table 7: Proposed registration fees that go down (GST inclusive)

Table 8: Fees that would be replaced