RICO’s DIGEST – Last month, legislators approved and was subsequently signed by the President and published in La Gaceta, the law condoning past Marchamos.
I, like many thousands more benefiting from this law, couldn’t be any happier, for I have in my view every day a vehicle I have not driven for many years, owing nine (9) Marchamos, including 2022, amounting to more than ¢1.5 million colones.
Restoring the vehicle, a Cadillac stretch limo, to road-worthy condition or selling it, was not feasible with the pending debt to the State.
So, I was somewhat disheartened when the original proposal last October fell through when President Carlos Alvarado vetoed the bill reducing the 2022 Marchamo, a bill that included the condonation.
But what really ticks me off is the misleading by the Riteve regarding the condonation. The vehicular inspection company, that is on its possible last legs given that their contract is coming up for renewal later this year and there is no clear decision by the government of what it is going to do, is taking advantage of vehicle owners, by falsely telling them they require the vehicular inspection to take advantage of the condonation.
Read this carefully, you don’t need the Riteve inspection to pay the Marchamo.
“That is grade-A, 100% bull cookies!” as Colonel Sherman T. Potter would say in exclamation.
However, you do need the inspection to get the sticker from the Instituto Nacional de Seguros (INS), the state agency in charge of collecting the Marchamo, to circulate on a public road.
The Marchamo and the Riteve are two separate things. The former ensures that the vehicle has the property tax and other items included in the Marchamo, the latter, that the vehicle is road-worthy.
You can pay the Marchamo at any INS office without the Riteve inspection, but you won’t get the sticker until the vehicle is inspected. Without the sticker, the vehicle cannot legally circulate on a public road without risking a fine and having the vehicle and/or license plate confiscated.
The objective behind the condonation is to eliminate the accumulated debt and give owners who have not been able to keep up financially, a chance to do so.
What is Riteve is doing is misleading many vehicle owners, like myself, who have no intention of putting my vehicle on the road, not yet anyway, but want to clear my debt for if and when I do.
In my case, for example, by paying the ¢99,000 colones for the 2022 Marchamo by April 20, I will have cleared my slate of a more than ¢1.5 million colones debt.
Don’t buy into the bull of cookies that the Riteve is selling.
