So I'm re-registering my vehicle. The point of registering something is to make sure there is a record of it. I'm very sure the record did not disappear from the database. I'm sure when the fee's started out there was an argument that handling those records imposed some cost on the state, and to not burden the general public with the cost of your interaction with the government there was a nominal fee to propagate the physical record to all the necessary offices. But now we have databases where an INSERT operation's cost is in the 1/1000000s of a cent. So it's just a tax.
Alright, so it's a fee to make my property to be able to be used on their roads.
So then why am I being assessed:
Renewal Fee: $42.40 Highway Use Fee:: $9.65
It's the same fucking thing in theory. Unless they are actually suggesting that running UPDATE records SET experation=NEWDATE WHERE vin=SOMEVIN costs them $42 to perform.