Man Pays $3,000 DMV Tax Bill With 300,000 Pennies!

1.

One Virginia man decided to give the DMV more than his two cents – and haven't we all dreamed of doing something like that? But not everybody agrees with his methods. And it sure wasn't free. What do you think?

2.

After months of frustration with the DMV, Nick Stafford had finally had enough and chose a weighty way to express himself: thousands and thousands of pennies. He delivered the $2,987.14 he owed in taxes in five wheelbarrows weighing a combined 1,548 pounds. It took employees more than 12 hours to count them by hand after the DMV's coin counting machines broke.

3.

These pennies were not from heaven as much as from Nick's petty, spiteful soul. His frustration started when he tried to find out where to register a new car. He has four houses across two counties, so he needed to contact someone to get a straight answer, which took a lot of work. After his call was routed to a call center, where he spent an hour on hold before giving up, he filed a Freedom of Information Act request for a direct line. Even then he had to call repeatedly to get his question answered.

4.

After that, he was incensed – and motivated. “If they were going to inconvenience me then I was going to inconvenience them,” he said. So Nick filed three lawsuits, one of which requested direct phone numbers to nine other local DMVs that his local DMV employees refused to provide. His lawsuits were dismissed when the state handed over a list of the phone numbers in court

5.

Of course, he wasn't quite done proving his point. There was still the matter of almost $3,000 in taxes on his cars. Nick's act of defiance didn't come cheap. He had to hire 11 people to break open rolls of pennies with a hammer, paying them $10 an hour. Between that, $400 in wheelbarrows, and $165 to file the lawsuits, he spent $1005 on his stunt.