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Committee approves annual CPI tie for dealer document fee; legislative auditor to compute adjustments
Summary
House Bill 476, which ties an existing motor-vehicle dealer document/processing fee to the Consumer Price Index with a 3% annual cap and assigns the legislative auditor to calculate the adjustment, was reported favorably as amended.
The Senate Committee on Commerce voted to report House Bill 476 favorably after adopting amendments that tie a motor-vehicle document-processing fee to the Consumer Price Index (CPI), with a maximum annual adjustment of 3 percent.
Senator Abraham explained the amendment, which assigns the Legislative Auditor to calculate the annual increase and requires the Motor Vehicle Commission to publish the updated fee on its website. The fee covers dealer costs such as credit investigations, titling work and other retail-sale processing functions.
Colter McMahon, representing the Louisiana Automobile Dealers Association, told the committee the change is a reasonable mechanism to allow the fee to track inflation and asked for favorable passage. No objections were recorded and the committee moved the bill favorably.
Under the amendment, the fee remains subject to the 3 percent cap in any year and dealers are not required to charge the maximum; the provision is intended to reduce rushed one-off legislative fee fixes and give dealers a predictable, transparent method for adjustments.
The bill will proceed to the Senate floor for consideration.
