The overhaul of Vermont's overhaul of its notary laws is in the House Ways and Means Committee, which is looking at what fees should be charged for commissions, and which branches of government will get the fees.
This prompted me to wonder how webcam notarization will affect commissioning fees if and when such notarizations catch on.
Just as Netflix and Amazon have driven most local video and book stores out of business, I expect that if webcam notarizations catch on, mobile notaries will be driven out of business. People who are notaries who do an occasional notarization for business collages, library patrons, ect., will see demand for these notarizations go down, and so may let their commissions lapse. This will reduce the government's revenue for commissions. Many of the government's costs are fixed; it costs just as much to develop a database or an online test whether you give it to 5 notaries or 50,000 notaries. So the government will have to raise the cost of a commission. This in turn will cause more of the occasional notaries to let their commissions lapse, which will drive up commission costs even further. I wonder how expensive the commissions will end up being?
This assumes that the webcam notarizations are done in call centers located in whichever state has the laxest regulations (or maybe in India). So only one or two states will be getting fees for the commissions of the webcam notaries. |
