4 ms·

Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a bus

by yebyen 7y ago

Echo this sentiment from another Midwesterner, ex-pat former New York State resident. I moved to Indiana and have not had the experience of incorporating a business entity, but the experience I had at the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles has been one to make me question whether bureaucracies are really necessarily horrible all of the time. Starting with the experience of moving to the state, to contrast (Upstate) Western New York vs Indiana: My New York insurance provider determined that I was no longer residing in the state, so mailed me a letter of notice that my vehicle insurance was being cancelled. In truth this was the best thing that could have happened, because Indiana insurance is so much cheaper, and I got a deal through my new employer. I was dragging my feet on this because I did not know better about it, and knew it would be painful. So I went to get new insurance, and learned I would need to re-register my car... Visiting the Indiana BMV was like no other auto vehicle registration experience. They were able to take care of me same day, and with no long wait – I waited up to at most 15 minutes to the desk. I was not shuffled from one desk to another, we completed the process in a single desk visit. On the other hand... New York requires you to surrender your plates when you leave the state. If you fail to surrender in a timely fashion, you will be fined punitively. Indiana has no such requirement, they trust you to destroy the plates when you drop a registration for a vehicle. In fact, when I brought plates for my second vehicle to the BMV to surrender them, as the lease was being grounded, not only did they let me know that they actually don't do that at all, I don't need to do that, but also that I was entitled to a credit for the portion of my registration that I had not used (which is fairly substantial, as it is based on the worth of the vehicle and paid annually, like a use tax.) The desk attendant was able to help me fill that form out before I left, and about 45 days later, two checks came in the mail. Being from New York, I found this kind of experience at a bureaucracy to be quite pleasant and seemingly impossible, (and from what I hear asking people who are born and raised here, it has only just become this way recently because of many reforms that have been applied in the past 20 years.)

Spooky23 7y ago
All DMVs are evil. Indiana is like a flag of convenience for car registration, they are focused on their revenue generation. A place like New York or Illinois is stuck dealing with all of the bullshit generated in New York City or Chicago. Registration and titles are impossible as a reaction to the industry the popped up in the 90s “laundering” stolen cars by swapping in salvage titles. Same deal with rings of people who’d purposefully cause accidents to defraud insurance companies for phony medical procedures. It’s even worse with trucks, where there is a complex web of federal, state and local regulations, which scummy operators are good at exploiting.
crankylinuxuser 7y ago
I live in Indiana, and incorporated about 3 weeks ago. Took me about 20 minutes, and I've never done it before. I had to use a unique company name, and that check could only be done in the Indiana Secretary General's office. 3 days later, I receive an email of congratulations. The next day, I get my physical paperwork. I was making a LLC, so it was pretty straightforward and no surprises. Once the SecGen approved it, getting IRS numbers was a whole 5 minutes. I also wish to sell things on Kickstarter/Indiegogo, so I applied for indiana tax numbers as well. $20 for 2 years.
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I've had the same experience you've had but with different states than you. IMO it all comes down to a difference in attitude of the people of the state. In some states people generally expect the government to serve the people and of course the pool of people from which the government is staffed is drawn from the state so the government reflects these values. In some states the government is expected to serve its own interested and when you staff a government with people with those expectations that's exactly what you get. If you just throw up your hands at bad government like it's something unchanging to be taken for granted then that's exactly what you'll get.
lenkite 7y ago
Isn't this simply a population problem ? One state is ~5x more populated than the other.
- waterhouse 7y ago
  Which means 5x the tax base (more, because NY has ~33% higher per capita income, although that also implies employees are more expensive), which could be used to hire 5x the employees. Surely there isn't some law that says a state's DMV must have exactly N employees regardless of the size of the state?
- yebyen 7y ago
  If it was simply a population problem, then why do long-time residents tell me that it wasn't always this way? Specific reforms intentionally undertaken to solve known problems with the system, made the system work better. As a life-long New York resident until about 4 years ago, I can also tell you that I probably wouldn't disagree if you told me you thought this was "not possible in New York." (And intuitively I'd say, it's not because of population numbers, but I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. There is a different mindset, whatever causes it I can't say, but I noticed immediately when I moved here, I still tell folks this place really just isn't like New York.) To elaborate a bit more, I felt like part of the New York mindset was basically psychologically planning oneself around not getting robbed. There were plenty of ways to get robbed that people just don't worry about around here (and some of this can surely be attributed to population issues.) I'm not just talking about general common-sense things like making sure that valuables are not left visible in your unlocked, parked car. I mean up to and everything including neighborhoods which don't have enough driveway space for everyone in large duplex houses to park their cars, where the streets are marked for opposite-side alternate day parking. So I don't have a private place to park my car at my rented house, and I have to park on the street, but I can't park my car on the street and leave it for 48 hours time without getting a ticket. This makes sense in Upstate New York as a condition required for Winter road maintenance, so that plows can get in and clear the snow off of the road. Only it's not just a condition required at Winter time, and when you point this out, people just accept it and say something like "yeah, well, they gotta make their money somehow..."

by yebyen 7y ago

Spooky23 7y ago

All DMVs are evil. Indiana is like a flag of convenience for car registration, they are focused on their revenue generation. A place like New York or Illinois is stuck dealing with all of the bullshit generated in New York City or Chicago. Registration and titles are impossible as a reaction to the industry the popped up in the 90s “laundering” stolen cars by swapping in salvage titles. Same deal with rings of people who’d purposefully cause accidents to defraud insurance companies for phony medical procedures. It’s even worse with trucks, where there is a complex web of federal, state and local regulations, which scummy operators are good at exploiting.

crankylinuxuser 7y ago

I live in Indiana, and incorporated about 3 weeks ago. Took me about 20 minutes, and I've never done it before. I had to use a unique company name, and that check could only be done in the Indiana Secretary General's office. 3 days later, I receive an email of congratulations. The next day, I get my physical paperwork. I was making a LLC, so it was pretty straightforward and no surprises. Once the SecGen approved it, getting IRS numbers was a whole 5 minutes. I also wish to sell things on Kickstarter/Indiegogo, so I applied for indiana tax numbers as well. $20 for 2 years.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I've had the same experience you've had but with different states than you. IMO it all comes down to a difference in attitude of the people of the state. In some states people generally expect the government to serve the people and of course the pool of people from which the government is staffed is drawn from the state so the government reflects these values. In some states the government is expected to serve its own interested and when you staff a government with people with those expectations that's exactly what you get. If you just throw up your hands at bad government like it's something unchanging to be taken for granted then that's exactly what you'll get.

lenkite 7y ago

Isn't this simply a population problem ? One state is ~5x more populated than the other.

waterhouse 7y ago
Which means 5x the tax base (more, because NY has ~33% higher per capita income, although that also implies employees are more expensive), which could be used to hire 5x the employees. Surely there isn't some law that says a state's DMV must have exactly N employees regardless of the size of the state?
yebyen 7y ago
If it was simply a population problem, then why do long-time residents tell me that it wasn't always this way? Specific reforms intentionally undertaken to solve known problems with the system, made the system work better. As a life-long New York resident until about 4 years ago, I can also tell you that I probably wouldn't disagree if you told me you thought this was "not possible in New York." (And intuitively I'd say, it's not because of population numbers, but I can't put my finger on exactly what it is. There is a different mindset, whatever causes it I can't say, but I noticed immediately when I moved here, I still tell folks this place really just isn't like New York.) To elaborate a bit more, I felt like part of the New York mindset was basically psychologically planning oneself around not getting robbed. There were plenty of ways to get robbed that people just don't worry about around here (and some of this can surely be attributed to population issues.) I'm not just talking about general common-sense things like making sure that valuables are not left visible in your unlocked, parked car. I mean up to and everything including neighborhoods which don't have enough driveway space for everyone in large duplex houses to park their cars, where the streets are marked for opposite-side alternate day parking. So I don't have a private place to park my car at my rented house, and I have to park on the street, but I can't park my car on the street and leave it for 48 hours time without getting a ticket. This makes sense in Upstate New York as a condition required for Winter road maintenance, so that plows can get in and clear the snow off of the road. Only it's not just a condition required at Winter time, and when you point this out, people just accept it and say something like "yeah, well, they gotta make their money somehow..."