Tax Dodgers Get the Boot

If your car disappears from the streets of Bridgeport, Conn., one night, it may well be the tax authorities that have it in tow.

Bridgeport this spring will join Arlington and Alexandria, Va., and New Haven, Conn., in rolling out the BootFinder, a high-tech law-enforcement tool that lets officers read the license plates of cars as they drive through its streets and checks the numbers against a database of tax scofflaws.

Composed of a camera and a laptop-like processor that plugs into the vehicles cigarette lighter, the system searches the streets as you drive by, says Andy Bucholz, president of G2 Tactics of Arlington. Cities can tow the cars or affix a warning sticker to the windshield giving you one more chance to get those tax checks in the mail. In New Haven alone, 1,800 car owners have done just that, coughing up more than $1 million to get their wheels back.

Cheryl Rosen