What is the South Carolina Temporary Tag law?

You might have already heard some rumblings about a new state law that has gone into effect as of May 15th of this year. Known as the South Carolina Temporary Tag law, this is a very important piece of legislature for the automotive industry in the area. It’s going to make a lot of positive changes for automotive dealerships, law enforcement and more while hardly affecting car shoppers in any additional way beyond what your temporary paper tags cause now.

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Benefits of the Law

The two most immediate benefits of the law effect law enforcement and auto dealers respectively. These new temporary tags are trackable, which means officers will be able to look up owners of the temporary tags like a regular license plate. With paper temporary tags like we have now, an officer has no information going in, so he doesn’t know if the car was involved in a crime or who might be driving it. The second benefit, to car dealers, is that it makes it much more difficult – if not impossible – to create fake plates, thus limiting blowback and negative impacts on car dealerships like us here at Godwin Motors. You can hear Luke Godwin himself talk about this in the interview video below.

How does it affect me?

A majority of the changes with the process will only affect people selling you the vehicle, such as the finance manager and title clerk. If you have to worry about anything, we’ll be sure to fill you in when it becomes apparent. As of now, the only thing you’ll need to worry about is that whoever you’re purchasing a vehicle from is giving you the appropriate temporary tags. Make sure you’re getting the new “smart” tags instead of old school paper tags, but punishment for paper tags won’t go into effect until November of this year, so don’t panic. Feel free to give us a call if you have any questions.