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Comment by gordon_freeman | Hacker News Reader

This would sound strange but the biggest subscription I pay annually (which does not seem like a subscription) is my DMV registration renewal fees. It comes around $300+ every year out-of-the-blue in my mailbox and I realize then that is indeed a subscription for a product which is my Car that I never thought about.

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From a practical persepctive you are indeed correct. In 99.9% of cases - the DMV are effectively a subscription expense you need to pay to use your car.

But they're not actually a subscription to your car; the fees are a subscription to the roads and associated infrastructure, which do need constant upkeep.

If you had a vehicle which was only used off-road (for example, on privately owned racetracks) and was only transported on a trailer then you would not need to register or insure it. For track motorcycles it's even relatively common to buy/sell them used without a title - so $0 fees to the government. Obviously exact laws on this may vary depending on location.

So taxes are subscription to living in a city/country? Kind of, but you can opt out of subscriptions.

well you can opt out of the DMV subscription by getting rid of the car and use public transport.

and just like ditching your printer, it does not work for everyone

Essentially, yes. Not for just living, but also for having free access to all the services provided by the government/municipality.

Property tax has to be more than that. Even if you don't own your residence, whatever the landlord passes through to tenants is going to be more than $300 a year.

Eh, as a landlord, taxes don’t determine how much rent I charge. I let the estate agent tell me what market rates are and go with that.

The place I own is in the UK so taxation is calculated differently (and as I don’t live in the UK, it’s confusing and that makes it a bit scary), but I don’t see how my decision making process of “delegate pricing to experts” would change if the UK hypothetically copied any of the American tax codes.

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