McGinness wants off-road vehicles to register and pay taxes

Owners of dirt bikes, snowmobiles, quad-runners and other purely off-road vehicles will face the same vehicle licensing, titling -- and tax -- requirements as car and truck owners under a bill introduced Wednesday in the Senate.

Sen. Mike McGinness, R-Fallon, introduced SB117, which would require all motorized off-road vehicles to register with the Department of Motor Vehicles.

The law would include a long list of small recreational vehicles used on dirt, snow, ice, water and elsewhere off-road, which now escape registration and titling requirements imposed on cars, trucks and SUVs.

"It was introduced to try to capture the taxes," McGinness said following introduction of SB117.

He said a large number of people are going out of state now to buy those kinds of vehicles. Since they live in Nevada, they don't pay sales taxes in the other state. They're supposed to pay the tax when they return home to Nevada.

But since they don't have to register the vehicle when they bring it back to Nevada, McGinness said there's no way to catch them.

"You go to Truckee to buy your four-wheeler so you can avoid the taxes," he said. "You're supposed to come back and tell the Department of Taxation, but that doesn't really happen."

Under the proposed law, anyone who buys an off-road vehicle would then have to register and title it through DMV. In the process, they would have to prove they already paid sales tax or pay Nevada the sales tax on the vehicle just like some one who buys a new car or truck now does.

The proposed legislation would apply to any motorized vehicle used for recreational purposes -- even hover craft designed for watery areas or swamps.

McGinness said he has no estimate of how many vehicles would be forced to register by the proposal or how much money it would raise for the state.

It does not include boats, which are licensed through the state.

SB117 was referred to the Transportation Committee for study.