We are talking about state registration plates of cars with a memorable combination of numbers and letters.
Rules for holding auctions for the sale of license plates in the Russian Federation have been discussed since 2010: at that time, the government instructed the relevant ministries to develop them. It was assumed that citizens would be able to legally obtain registration plates with a “nice”, that is, easy to remember, combination of letters and numbers with the help of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. A similar practice is currently used in some countries, but it has never been launched in Russia.
The development of the relevant regulations was sluggish. Only by 2020, the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs jointly created a draft resolution that contained rules for holding auctions and reserving license plates. That document assumed that the Tax Code would provide for a special fee for the ability to choose a combination of letters and numbers for a state license plate. For example, the «price» of the A111AA license plate was estimated at 600 thousand rubles at that time.
However, this project did not go further after discussion. Now deputies of the New People party have proposed resuming work on this idea. They argue that such auctions could, in their opinion, give an annual increase to the budget in the amount of several billion rubles. The request was sent to representatives of the departments.
As Kommersant reports, a response has already been received: it is reported that the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation have suspended work on creating auctions for the sale of beautiful license plates. In the near future, they do not plan to return to this project. Thus, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation noted that the country currently has other priorities. In turn, the Ministry of Economic Development believes that there are currently no grounds for carrying out a corresponding reform.
It is worth noting that auctions for the sale of license plates are currently held in Russia, but these services are provided by commercial firms. However, in these cases, a different scheme is in effect, which has significant differences from the one previously developed by the Ministry of Economy and the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
We are talking about the fact that beautiful license plates, which are usually installed on cheap cars, are put up for auction. In this case, the buyer of such a donor car registers it with the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate in his own name, and then receives the right to remove the state registration plate and reserve it for himself (while selling the car back to the previous owner). As the publication notes, in such transactions, prices can vary from several tens of thousands to several million rubles per state registration plate.
Another «stuck» bill concerns the introduction of fines for «dangerous driving». It became known in February of this year that the State Duma of the Russian Federation once again rejected the proposed corresponding amendments to the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation.