New Zealand Vehicle Licence (Rego) Renewal

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-04

The document was derived from three converging live NZTA sources: the authority's own guidance pages, the current MR1B paper/agent-counter form, and a genuine, non-submitting walkthrough of NZTA's own online renewal wizard that captured real input element ids. It was not, however, walked screen-by-screen end to end (the wizard's Step 2 "Review details" onward requires a real plate number and a genuine payment), so the full field-by-field comparison manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) requires has not been completed. It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): nz/nzta/vehicle-licence-renewal / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA).
• Bot-check note: direct curl and WebFetch requests to www.nzta.govt.nz content and asset paths are intercepted by an Incapsula JS challenge (a ~200-byte HTML stub containing only a /_Incapsula_Resource script tag, HTTP 200/403 depending on path) — consistent with the WAF block already documented for this domain in the GOV-474..532 era and re-confirmed as still present for the guidance pages and the MR1B PDF asset in this cycle (though a prior cycle, [[gov1028-sg-road-tax-renewal]], found some nzta.govt.nz paths reachable by plain curl — that was not reproducible this cycle for the specific pages used here). Worked around with a real headless Chromium session (Playwright), which passes the JS challenge like an ordinary browser; all page text and the PDF binary below were captured through that session, not through a static fetch.
• Primary guidance source: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/licensing-rego/getting-your-vehicle-licence-rego ("Getting your vehicle licence (rego)") — rendered in a headless browser, full page text captured and read in full, including "Vehicle licensing responsibilities", "Continuous vehicle licensing", "Have a current WoF or CoF", "Step 1: Get a reminder", "Step 2: Renew your licence", "Step 3: Get your new licence label", "Display your licence label", and "If you don't renew in time".
• Fees guidance source: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/vehicles/licensing-rego/vehicle-fees/licensing-fees ("Licensing (rego) fees") — same technique, full page text captured, including "Rego fees include: a licence fee / an ACC levy / an administration fee" and "How to pay your rego" (online administration fee $8.66, agent administration fee $11.99).
• Primary form source: the current MR1B (edition "09/24") "Application to license motor vehicle" PDF, at https://www.nzta.govt.nz/assets/resources/mr1b-application-to-license-motor-vehicle/MR1B-Application-to-license-motor-vehicle.pdf, linked directly from the "Getting your vehicle licence (rego)" page. Downloaded via the same authenticated (Incapsula-cookie-bearing) headless browser session using its APIRequestContext, confirmed a genuine 115,087-byte %PDF-1.4 binary (not the challenge stub), and text extracted with pdfjs-dist getTextContent — a static, non-fillable 2-page form (no AcroForm widgets). Both pages were read and transcribed in full, including the note-6 vehicle-usage code table and the note-5 colour list.
• Live transactional wizard: https://transact.nzta.govt.nz/v2/vehicle-licence-renewal — reached directly (this subdomain is a separate Angular application and was not behind the same Incapsula challenge). A headless-browser walkthrough loaded the landing screen ("What you'll need: Your renewal notice or your plate number. A Visa or Mastercard credit or debit card, or your online banking details (POLi)."), clicked the real "Get started" submit control, and reached the genuine Step 1 "Enter vehicle details" screen. Its actual DOM input elements were captured: id="plate" (maxlength 6), id="reminderNumber" (maxlength 6), a LicenceDurationList radio group with 12 options (ids LicenceDuration1Months … LicenceDuration12Months), and a useExpiryDate checkbox toggling "Or select a specific expiry date". No plate number, reminder number, or any other value was entered, and the wizard was not advanced past Step 1 — the review stopped at the point a genuine plate/reminder number and a real payment would be required, consistent with this registry's treatment of other credential/lookup-gated live services (e.g. ca/on/mto/vehicle-permit-renewal).
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-04 (all sources confirmed live at authoring time).
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

What was directly observed vs. inferred

| Field(s) | Basis | |---|---| | plateNumber | Directly observed from the live wizard's own id="plate" input (maxlength 6, placeholder example "ABC123") and MR1B's "Plate number" box. | | reminderNumber | Directly observed, live wizard id="reminderNumber" (maxlength 6) and its own verbatim helper text. | | vehicleExemptFromWofCofRequirement, currentWofOrCofHeld | Directly observed, "Getting your vehicle licence (rego)" — the WoF/CoF requirement sentence and its stated exceptions (continuous-licensing-exempt vehicles; mopeds). | | renewalChannel | Directly observed, "Step 2: Renew your licence — You can renew online or at an agent." | | useSpecificExpiryDate, specificExpiryDate | Directly observed from the live wizard's useExpiryDate checkbox and its "Or select a specific expiry date" label. Restricted to the online channel because MR1B's own notes state a specific-expiry-date change requires a separate MR27 form — a discrepancy between the two channels, not an oversight; see "Explicitly out of scope" below. | | licenceDurationMonths | Directly observed from both the live wizard's LicenceDurationList radio group (12 options) and MR1B's own "How many months would you like to license your vehicle for? (please tick) 1 2 3 ... 12". | | onlinePaymentMethod | Directly observed, wizard landing screen: "What you'll need ... A Visa or Mastercard credit or debit card, or your online banking details (POLi)." | | agentDocumentBrought | Directly observed, "Renew in person — You can either: take the reminder to the agent / fill out an Application to license motor vehicle (MR1B) form". | | registeredPersonLastNameOrCompanyName, registeredPersonFirstNames | Directly observed, MR1B "Registered person details" box, including the "*Must be the name of the registered person" annotation. | | vehicleMake, vehicleModel | Directly observed, MR1B "Vehicle details — Make / Model (see note 2)"; note 2's "state the manufacturer's designation... not the year of manufacture" transcribed into vehicleModel's description. | | vehicleBasicColour, vehicleSecondColour | Directly observed, MR1B "Vehicle colour" box and its note 5's 14-colour list, transcribed verbatim into the enum. | | vehicleUsageChanged, newVehicleUsageCode | Directly observed, MR1B "New usage — Only complete if your vehicle usage has changed since your last application" and note 6's full usage-code table (codes 01-19, with 12 and 15 genuinely absent from the source table — not an extraction error). | | particularsCorrectDeclaration | Directly observed, MR1B "Applicant's signature X — I certify that the particulars given are correct." | | documents[].mr1bApplicationForm | Directly observed, "fill out an Application to license motor vehicle (MR1B) form – pick one up at the agent or print it at home." | | documents[].licensingFeePayment | Directly observed reference ("Licensing (rego) fees" page: licence fee + ACC levy + administration fee, with the $8.66-online vs. $11.99-agent administration-fee split). Amount not encoded as a fixed field value: NZTA computes the licence fee from the vehicle's type/fuel/weight class (a large, table-driven fee schedule not modelled field-by-field here, consistent with this registry's fee convention — cf. in/morth/vehicle-registration-renewal's renewalFee) and the administration fee from the chosen channel. |

Explicitly out of scope for v1.0.0

• First-time vehicle registration when a vehicle first enters New Zealand — a distinct process the "Getting your vehicle licence (rego)" page itself calls out ("Vehicle licensing is different to registration").
• Applying for an exemption from continuous vehicle licensing ("putting your rego on hold") — a separate MR24 form/online application, referenced but not modelled.
• Changing only the licence expiry date without a renewal (MR27) — the reason specificExpiryDate is scoped to the online channel only; on the agent/MR1B path this is a genuinely separate form the source itself names.
• Updating the registered person's address. The online wizard's own landing screen recommends doing this first ("Update your mailing address so we send your rego label to the right place"), but it is a distinct "Update your address and contact details" service, not a field this transaction collects.
• Ordering a replacement licence label if one is lost, stolen, or fails to arrive — a separate service, referenced in "Step 3" but out of scope.
• A one-time Title/ownership-transfer event. New Zealand has no standalone vehicle-ownership-transfer schema yet: the equivalent form, MR13B, was investigated during nl/rdw/vehicle-ownership-transfer's authoring cycle ([[gov1014-nl-rdw-vehicle-ownership-transfer]]) and found to have no independently downloadable/fillable copy anywhere on nzta.govt.nz (confirmed via a domain-wide Wayback CDX search at that time) — this remains open for a future cycle, not attempted again here.

Test run with mock data

A mock renewal packet was assembled at conformance/nz/nzta/vehicle-licence-renewal/1.0.0/application-packet.json for an ordinary registered owner renewing online for 6 months by credit card — a fabricated plate number, not a real vehicle. Following the scripted-conformance-check technique used for the last several renewal cycles ([[gov1021-in-vehicle-registration-renewal]], [[gov1028-sg-road-tax-renewal]]), a standalone ~80-line script re-implementing the schema's own required/requiredWhen/validation.enum evaluation (GSP-0013 condition grammar all/any/not/leaf-compare) was run against the packet's collectedValues: 21 field/document entries evaluated, 0 violations. The packet exercises the online/no-specific-date/ WoF-CoF-not-exempt branch; the agent/MR1B branch (including the usage-change sub-branch) was reasoned through manually against the source text rather than exercised in a second packet. No value was submitted to any government system: the live transact.nzta.govt.nz wizard was stopped at the point a genuine plate number and payment would be required (see "Live transactional wizard" above), consistent with this registry's treatment of other credential/lookup-gated live services.

Scope and jurisdiction notes

This closes New Zealand's recurring DMV "Registration/Tag" renewal gap flagged as open across the last several renewal-vertical authoring cycles (most recently [[gov1028-sg-road-tax-renewal]] and [[gov1030-sg-road-tax-renewal-review-merged]], which found nzta.govt.nz directly curl-reachable for a different page in that cycle and recommended a real attempt here rather than skipping on the strength of the older WAF-block note). Per the GOV-960 audit lineage, India, New Zealand, and Singapore were the three jurisdictions with a published Drivers-Licence schema but no recurring Vehicle Registration/Tag renewal schema (as opposed to the one-time Title/ownership-transfer schema); India and Singapore were closed under GOV-1021/GOV-1028, and this closes it for New Zealand. CA/Ontario's ca/on/mto/vehicle-permit-renewal remains the last open candidate in this specific gap, twice blocked on a live-wizard eligibility lookup requiring a real, already-issued plate/permit pair — a third attempt should look for a static MTO/ServiceOntario PDF handbook instead of the live wizard, per the note left in [[gov1028-sg-road-tax-renewal]].

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) field-by-field against the live transact.nzta.govt.nz/v2/vehicle-licence-renewal wizard using a genuine plate/reminder number through to the payment and confirmation screens, confirms the exact online/agent administration fees and payment options still offered, resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3, practice Procedure step 5), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt/nextReviewBy.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-01 (6 months). Re-check the source on or before that date and on any source.url change.