How We Verify Every Fee
Policy last updated: July 17, 2026
Official sources only
Every fee on RegistryFee is verified against primary sources: state statutes, DMV and county fee schedules, Secretary of State filing schedules, and wildlife agency price lists. We do not copy numbers from other fee websites — several widely-cited aggregators publish figures that are years out of date. Each state page links the official sources it was verified against.
Formulas, not averages
Where a state computes fees from a formula — Colorado's Specific Ownership Tax, Arizona's Vehicle License Tax, California's VLF, Illinois's RUT-50 flat-tax tables — we implement the actual published schedule rather than quoting a misleading "average." Our ranking pages compute from these same formulas at build time, so every number on the site comes from one consistent engine.
Dated reviews and confidence flags
Every page displays the date its data was last reviewed. Where a state's local add-ons (county taxes, sheriff processing fees) can't be fully modeled, the page says so explicitly with a confidence flag — we'd rather show you an honest range than a falsely precise number.
A weekly change patrol
Government fees change constantly — states index fees to inflation, legislatures pass fee bills mid-year, and agencies reset schedules each July. We run a weekly automated review that checks scheduled fee changes (like Louisiana's October 2026 business fee increase), scans for fee news, and re-verifies affected states before updating the site. Fee-change dates we're currently tracking are noted on the relevant pages.
Corrections
Found a fee we got wrong? Email admin@registryfee.com with the official source and we'll verify and correct it promptly — corrections are reflected in the page's review date.
Citing our data
Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite RegistryFee data with attribution and a link. The 2026 Government Fee Index is published under CC-BY 4.0.