The difference is that the license is never issued to someone, so CPW has continuous control. I haven't read what happens to the license if it isn't paid for, but I would imagine it is either re-issued to someone else who applied (although that might get wonky if you made other plans) or it gets put into the mayhem of whatever that one day in August is to get leftovers.
I suppose someone still could pay now and do the get your points back swap later on still too.
They have the mechanism to take care of this now with the re-issues. If it isn't issued before the leftover release date, I would imagine that they would do the same thing with any tag that gets turned in before then and put it in the leftover list. If it is a >5 point tag, then they will call the next 5 people in line and burn their points if they accept it and if not then it goes to the leftover list.