Quoted:
I'm generally not so much of a critic of local government, having been employed by it for about sixteen years before my move to Missouri.  I am a critic of the Federal Government, and to a lesser extent, state governments.  However, I just spent an hour and a half in a line (that was only about 10 people long) at the tax assessors office in Independence so I could get a single piece of paper that says I don't owe Missouri taxes on my two vehicles.

I arrived at about 2:25pm, and I didn't get back into my car until 3:50pm.  That doesn't count the 20 minute drive each way to Independence (the only other choice in Jackson County is downtown Kansas City, I wasn't about to go down there).  Basically, we moved here recently and I have to register our vehicles in Missouri.  I needed this single piece of paper to prove that I don't owe Missouri property taxes on two vehicles that have never been registered in Missouri.  It should be pretty easy to check, at the DMV, whether a vehicle has ever been registered in Missouri.  If it has, fine, send the owner to get the proof of no taxes owned.  If it hasn't, then obviously no taxes can be owed on it.  They also insisted I present proof that I hadn't lived in Missouri for the last two years.  The list of documents included all sorts of things that people generally don't keep copies of, like 2 year old utility bills.  Luckily I owned a house in North Carolina and had two past years of January mortgage statements (they would only accept paperwork dated in January of the last two years).  I'm not sure how I would have proved my non-residency in Missouri if I had owned the house outright.

Anyway, the whole process was absolutely crazy.  It was a huge waste of time, and there was no reason it should have taken so long.  It didn't help that they had several signs telling people not to use their cell phones while conducting county business, and during the time I was in line I witnessed one of the clerks who was supposed to be processing customers make four phone calls on her cell phone.

Of course I'm not done with the process.  Now I have to get the odometer verified on both my vehicles, which apparently involves paying for a state inspection even though both of them are exempt from the inspection requirement since they are less than 5 years old.  Then I have to take that paper, the paper from the assessors office, my proof of insurance, and my registration to the DMV, where I might be able to get license plates.  It really seems like Missouri would have preferred I keep my vehicles registered in North Carolina, pay the (much lower) property taxes there, and not give them a dime.