The buggers have plugged the rego hold loophole

[Cadbury]

Used to be, you could put your steed on rego hold, and at a time that suited you, re-rego it, at which point your rego would start same day going forwards. This also worked if your rego had expired but had not been placed on hold; you could put it on hold, then re-register, and the new rego would only kick in on the same day, not from when your last rego expired.

It appears the powers that be have spotted this; I went to re-register a bike that had been on hold for just over 1 month of the applied-for 3 months, and found that the new rego was being backdated to when the on-hold had been initiated. Which meant that I was paying for registration for a period when the bike was not being used. Sods!

Or am I missing something?

[Katman]

Or am I missing something?

The minimum period for putting your rego on hold is three months.

If you then decide to register the bike before that three months is up, then the rego is back dated to when it expired.

It's been like that for a long long time.

[Madness]

The current system has been unchanged for as long as I can recall. You have to have had the rego on hold for a minimum of three months before you don't have to back-pay. If you only put it on hold for three months at a time, they'll still back-date it to the last time a 3-month "on-hold" period expired. Put it on hold for 6 months minimum, then you can license it at any point after the first 3 months has passed without back-paying anything.

[SaferRides]

If your rego is on hold for 3 months, you can register it during the last month to restart from the date when the 3 months expires.

The rego sticker only shows the new expiry date, not the start date. So the rego appears current but is actually still on hold until the 3 months is up.

Of course, no one will know this unless they run the plate.

So it's not really a loophole at all, it just looks like you have a current rego when you don't.

[BASS-TREBLE]

Similar to above, you can put it on hold for say 6 months and after month 3 buy 6 months rego from end of hold period (months 7-12).

You'll get a rego sticker showing you have rego till month 12 but you still have 3 months of hold left.