I’m not sure of the legality of it, but there’s an interesting tactic used by some car buyers here in Georgia that seems to not be legal.  On a lot of used cars, you will see handwritten notes on the license plate area with the phrase “Tag Applied For”.  While this is better than nothing, it seems to be a convenient way of trying to skirt the issue of paying for your license tag.  If you sell your own car to someone else, obviously you’re not going to have one of those official temporary tags that licensed dealers give out which show an expiration date.  I’m sure that those barely-legitimate used car dealerships that sell 15+ year old cars also don’t bother to give a buyer a legitimate temporary tag.

You’ll see these fake notices on the rattiest of cars driving around.  Most are written on cardboard, some are placed in the rear window inside the car.  Who knows if these people are legitimately waiting for their tag to come in the mail but I’m willing to guess most of these signs aren’t legit and the driver has no intention of paying their tag fee, which in Georgia is a percentage of what your vehicle is worth.

Of course, with a large metro area where you have a larger base of people not familiar with the English language due to them being an immigrant or simply uneducated, these fake tag signs can be amusing.  My wife has seen two of these which gave us a chuckle.  One such “tag” read “Tag Applicated For”.  New verbs are always a good way to draw attention TO yourself, not away, thus defeating the purpose of your sign.  The latest one she spotted was “For Applied Tag”, which will probably result that that person “ticket getting a”.