You're lucky to merely have to pay some money for your "power kayak".
In my state, to actively discourage the construction of home built boats, if I want to build a 15 foot sailboat, I need to work with the coast guard and state DMV (spoiler, they don't actually work together, the finger pointing is hilarious) to get a hull number assigned, then fight the DOT to get it titled (boats are titled where I live, and its agonizing although it only costs $5) and its quite a fight involving official inspection because most "homemade" boats are people trying to register are Crestliners with the serial numbers filed off, then I can fight the DNR to register myself obtaining a DNR customer number, and then fight the DNR to register the boat, essentially linking my CG hull ID number to my DNR customer ID number for a mere $17/yr, ironically the total cost of all of this for the first year would only be roughly $30 but it takes like 100+ hours of phone calling and meeting people and filling out forms. I pay $35 for a quart of good topside marine paint so the point is not the expense but the bureaucracy agony. All that for basically an inland lake dingy with a sail on it.
This happened with boats here as my little plastic kayak with a tiny electric assist has to be registered and taxed as if it was a full sized bass fishing boat with a v8.