DVLA Rule

[guydewdney]

what i find annoying is that one of mu cars (the pimpmobile) has been registered in my name, it tax exempt, yet i ahve to sorn it every year? why? it makes no difference monetary wise if it is on the road or not? sorn it - free, tax it - free... yet i have to do one or the other every year... waste of time / paperwork surely?

 

[scotth_uk]

Hmm.. I have read the thread, and agree with you that some of the system's processing/accuracy flaws which should be rectified - no denying that. Systems will always be improved, and governments will always move at snail's pace.

Ultimately though, I am all for zero tolerance on taxing and MOTing the car and think you get a reasonable deal here. I really cannot see how there is any excuse to be late. If they send you the reminder with 28 days notice, it's perfectly reasonable to expect you to sort it out in that time frame.

As a side:

I find the term "road tax" here very interesting. Back in QLD Australia, it's simply called registration and includes compulsory third party insurance and traffic improvement fees. It's based on the number of cylinders of the car as follows:

http://www.transport.qld.gov.au/qt/...ef145092ae8ecb604a256a86000fb78e?OpenDocument

 

[Dieselman]

I find the term "road tax" here very interesting. Back in QLD Australia, it's simply called registration and includes compulsory third party insurance and traffic improvement fees. It's based on the number of cylinders of the car as follows:

Germany has a similar system. All cars are insured through the local town hall and have the OWNERS registration plates issued with the insurance and test visible on the plate.

 

[Dieselman]

what i find annoying is that one of mu cars (the pimpmobile) has been registered in my name, it tax exempt, yet i ahve to sorn it every year? why? it makes no difference monetary wise if it is on the road or not? sorn it - free, tax it - free... yet i have to do one or the other every year... waste of time / paperwork surely?

I don't agree. It ensures you have MOT test and insurance. That is all the RFL is there for anyway in reality.

I think Plod would back me here. If you see a car without RFL you can virtually guarentee there is another reason.

 

[Will]

what i find annoying is that one of mu cars (the pimpmobile) has been registered in my name, it tax exempt, yet i ahve to sorn it every year? why? it makes no difference monetary wise if it is on the road or not? sorn it - free, tax it - free... yet i have to do one or the other every year... waste of time / paperwork surely?

I think it is all part of the DVLA/Government's battle to remove uninsured/MOTd cars off the roads.

IIRC (and I may be wrong!), when you apply for your 'free' tax disc, you still have to provide evidence of a current MOT and valid insurance.

Otherwise, any car eligible for tax exemption could be assumed road legal, whether it was or not?!?

By making the SORN declaration an active task, ie, the registered keeper makes a statement/promise not to use the vehicle on public roads etc and reiterating the consequences (fines etc), the DVLA can then comfortably 'enforce' any breaches of this policy.

Don't worry Guy, I am not on their side at all!

I have got a few old motorbikes registered in my name, and have had hassles with their less than perfect system myself!

Eg, one bike was currently taxed. A couple of weeks before it was due, the usual tax it/SORN it/go to jail (!) letter came through.

It was garaged, off the road, and was to stay this way for a few years. I declared it SORN, and got a receipt. A SORN declaration apparantly lasts 12 months (unless you re-tax the vehicle). Anyway, after 12 months, no 'reminder' letter came through. Then after about 2-3 years, I got a regular reminder letter, and declared it SORN again. Didn't make sense to me?

One other example that annoys me is this:

At the start of this year, my (now sold) 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth was garaged (as it had been since just before christmas). The MOT and tax expired in the same month, and I got the tax reminder letter a week or so before the end. The MOT expired somewhere around the 27th and the tax on the 30/31st. I went to book the car in for an MOT (as it was due) and the earliest date I could get was for the first week of the following month. I went to purchase a tax disc (before the MOT had expired) and was informed that I could not buy a tax disc as the MOT would have expired when the tax disc came into force! I had never realised this, as I had never come accross it. Anyway, it seemed so much hassle to have to declare the vehicle SORN for literally one week, get it MOTd (with no TAX disc!) and then go back to the post office again to re-apply for the tax that I decided to buy 12 months tax, starting from the current month (ie 11 months and a couple of days). This meant that I lost one month off my tax, but makes a mockery of the rules stating that you cannot tax a vehicle if the MOT is to expire before the tax starts. Convenient that it works in their favour though.....

Anyway, just another example of their incompetance!

Cheers,

Will

 

[Dieselman]

At the start of this year, my (now sold) 190E 2.3-16 Cosworth was garaged (as it had been since just before christmas). The MOT and tax expired in the same month, and I got the tax reminder letter a week or so before the end. The MOT expired somewhere around the 27th and the tax on the 30/31st. I went to book the car in for an MOT (as it was due) and the earliest date I could get was for the first week of the following month. I went to purchase a tax disc (before the MOT had expired) and was informed that I could not buy a tax disc as the MOT would have expired when the tax disc came into force! I had never realised this, as I had never come accross it. Anyway, it seemed so much hassle to have to declare the vehicle SORN for literally one week, get it MOTd (with no TAX disc!) and then go back to the post office again to re-apply for the tax that I decided to buy 12 months tax, starting from the current month (ie 11 months and a couple of days). This meant that I lost one month off my tax, but makes a mockery of the rules stating that you cannot tax a vehicle if the MOT is to expire before the tax starts. Convenient that it works in their favour though.....

No, if you think about it's right. The vehicle would not have a valid MOT for the time that the issuing clerk is issuing the RFL for.

You may well be honest and obtain a fresh MOT but how many people might simply run the vehicle for a year with no MOT or insurance.

 

[Will]

No, if you think about it's right. The vehicle would not have a valid MOT for the time that the issuing clerk is issuing the RFL for.

You may well be honest and obtain a fresh MOT but how many people might simply run the vehicle for a year with no MOT or insurance.

Oh I know exactly that it is 'right'! I think you may have mis-understood my post?

I am fully aware that you cannot tax a car for the month following if the MOT is due to expire before (in my case, by a matter of days!). But what it doesn't mean is that you cannot tax your vehicle.

I proceeded to tax the vehicle for 12 months (well, 11 months and a few days), and the MOT would have still been invalid for virtually all of this period. As it happens, I wasn't using, and didn't use the vehicle until the day of the MOT test (it had been in storage for a few months), and my insurance was valid for many months.

What was there to stop me from taxing the vehicle, and then not bothering with the MOT and cancelling my insurance.

So in my book, no it doesn't make sense at all. The initial idea may have good intentions, but what kind of organisation leaves a 'loophole' such as this? It did interest me however that it was in 'their' interest, as I had effectively paid twice for the same month's tax!

Cheers,

Will

 

[peterchurch]

Hadn't seen this thread before as it started before my time here but felt compelled to respond.

I have been working with ANPR equipment for over 3 years now and in that time have seen vast changes in the numbers of untaxed vehicles on the roads. I do not however feel that this it totally down to ANPR and the increased chance of untaxed vehicles getting stopped I feel the SORN arrangements have also contributed to this.
What we now find is that the miscreants who feel that a car is a right, even if they cannot afford to run one legally are now paying over the odds to buy a taxed car. If you are trying to sell a banger worth £50 put 12mths road tax on it and then advertise it in LOOT for £500 and watch them come running.
An extra £200 or so for the car is better than the £000s they would be paying if they could find a company to insure them.
The vast majority of 'hits' we now get on the ANPR from the DVLA database are of recently purchased vehices that have no current keeper showing on the database they give us.

Good Im glad that you can catch these people But the problem that we have is that I would doubt that the chavs that are running around in these bangers are going to register them to their own address (unless they are very stupid) so fining the rest of us that do tax/register/insure our vehicles because we have not been able to get the time to go and stand in a post office for 2 hours to get the disk is not the best idea I have seen this year.

There are a number of simple solutions to this issue

1) Dispose of the tax disk and add a 5p surcharge to each petrol transaction.
The more you drive, the more fuel you buy, and thus the more pump transactions you make and the more tax you pay as a result

2) Keep the tax disk but set up a monthly direct debit so that you can collect £10 per month and send the disk out to the registered keeper of the vehicle
automatically...

3) Buy tax only when the car is being driven. That is to say you pay a toll of .50p per day that you wish to drive the car on the road. (an sms transaction would do the job nicely.)

The last two of these ideas would raise more money for the treasury Im sure, and we could remove the overhead of having to administer the present system...

 

[Plodd]

It's been touched on by others here but apart from the large sums of money it raises for the treasury the reason we have Road Tax is a once yearly check of our insurance and Test Certificate.

 

[guydewdney]

i do find the idea of tax discs abhorrant - every othe country uses a different system - most (some?) use a tax/insurance system where the govt provides basic 3rd party only in return - here we get nothing. crap roads, no parking (well, nothing legally big enough for my car ) - tolls on M - ways.. no govt breakdown service, noting...

what the hell do i pay 'road fund duty' for? I pay 4,000 quid a year in tax on my petrol bill (assuming 50% hahhahhahah goes to the govt) - which i think covers my wear and tear on the road.




oh - im so angry.

 

[peterchurch]

It's been touched on by others here but apart from the large sums of money it raises for the treasury the reason we have Road Tax is a once yearly check of our insurance and Test Certificate.

<CHAV>If I don’t care about road tax then I doubt that I give a damn about the other crap that the establishment might try and foist on me </CHAV>

whats your point ???

You would have more luck making the insurance certificate a check in the MOT and registering that the car reg with vin passed an MOT with insurance on 30th November 2004 the owners driving licence was. (not M Mouse)

Now you know who owns the car as of that day, as well as the state of the car and the type of the insurance held for it...

 

[guydewdney]

the mot is a joke.. a friend of mine (top mechanic for lexus) went recently for a ;topup' on his mot course..

he stated:-

a car pulls in, red at the front, white at the bak, crabbing down the road, different plates front and back, obv a cut and shut - is this a reason to fail an MOT - aparantly not......

might be illegal - but not an mot failure.

 

[andy_k]

but

you don't need to own the car to get it MoT'd.

you don't need a driving licence to own a car.

you don't need to own a car to be the registered keeper

so that system wouldn't work.

Far better (well in my opinion) would be to make us display a non transferable insurance and MoT "disk" in our windows as we do with the tax disc

 

[calum]

Related issue: I have a Merc which is coming to the end of a 3-year lease from Merc Finance. Received a letter today telling me that I must send the entire V5 logbook to them, at least 2 months before the end of the lease, having filled out the "selling to trade" bit, otherwise face penalty charges from Merc Finance.

They will then send it on to DVLA, they say. Of course, if they're late doing so...

Also annoyed that I have to get a bloody MOT for the car (despite the fact that I will not have it for even one full day when it legally requires an MOT).

 

[RichieRuss2000]

Surely its the DVLA's responsibility to prove that the vehicle was used on the public road... as it could be in your drive as a 2nd or 3rd vehicle that isn't used for months on end... why should we the public be forced to sign a disclaimer... This is similar to the speed cameras where the authorities try to force you to disclose you were driving.

I imagine that this will eventually be contested in court.

 

[aka$h]

Glad I read this post, My clk tax runs out on 1/12!! I didnt even get a reminder in the post
Ill by at the post office first thing!

 

[scotth_uk]

Calum,

Send the papers by recorded post, so that you can prove everything. Ask Merc Finance for a letter to confirm receipt of documents. Covered.

MOT requirement seems reasonable to me, as any problems with the MOT are likely to be caused by yourself (or at least whilst in your care), hence you will need to rectify them.

Related issue: I have a Merc which is coming to the end of a 3-year lease from Merc Finance. Received a letter today telling me that I must send the entire V5 logbook to them, at least 2 months before the end of the lease, having filled out the "selling to trade" bit, otherwise face penalty charges from Merc Finance.

They will then send it on to DVLA, they say. Of course, if they're late doing so...

Also annoyed that I have to get a bloody MOT for the car (despite the fact that I will not have it for even one full day when it legally requires an MOT).

 

[scotth_uk]

Hmm.

Other countries are full of toll roads. No problem, use them if you want to save time.
Other countries don't have government break down services that I am aware of (certainly not where I come from).
Parking is always going to be difficult on an island of this size with this many people and cars. More a standard population problem. Ever tried to park in Asia?

I see enough road works to believe that some of the money from the tax discs is being used for improvements. There definitely should be a third party insurance component, but given that the road tax is peanuts I am not surprised.

Most of all the cost of road tax is pitifully small!

I will concede that the tax on petrol is a pain though. It's so much more expensive per litre than other countries, and for no good reason.

I sound really tolerant about all of this, but having come from a big wide open country to this one, it's much easier for me to see why things are difficult here.

Also, driving across Central london during the day is something I do frequently enough to support the congestion charge and even raising/extending it!

i do find the idea of tax discs abhorrant - every othe country uses a different system - most (some?) use a tax/insurance system where the govt provides basic 3rd party only in return - here we get nothing. crap roads, no parking (well, nothing legally big enough for my car ) - tolls on M - ways.. no govt breakdown service, noting...

what the hell do i pay 'road fund duty' for? I pay 4,000 quid a year in tax on my petrol bill (assuming 50% hahhahhahah goes to the govt) - which i think covers my wear and tear on the road.

 

[guydewdney]

160 quid to a man who just about affords his 200 quid car to get to work is a lot of money.. as is the 85+ p a litre...

The german road building program that i witnessed was efficient, and little to no traffic jams on the major city-city autobahns.

I have (iirc) 7 cars at ther mo - and two bikes - (ok only two cars on the road...) - why cant i have a blanket tax disc, like my blanket insurance?

the theory that the tax disc shows that you have (or had) insurance is a joke - i can walk into a post office with someone elses v5 etc and my insurance (trade) and get tax - without changing the name on the V5...

 

[glojo]

Having read all these posts I think we ought to scrap the road fund licence, and perhaps add a few pence onto petrol. This will instantly 'catch' everyone that uses a motor vehicle on a highway, and save on fortune on the administration of road fund licences.

Now the down side.
In lieu of a road fund licence how about a 'licence' issued by the insurance company. This 'licence' must be displayed in a prominant designated position that can be detected by a favourite speed camera's or similar device. No licence displayed and your 'snapped'. Vehicles parked on the public highway without a licence should be reported to a 0800 number. (They are after all ininsured) This number\dept would be self financing and be able to sell or dispose of vehicles after a designated time.

MOT
Takes place every year and the MOT station 'crimps' the current year onto the front number plate??

These are just suggestions that no doubt will be shot down, but at least enforcement agencies could clearly see that every vehicle was either complying with the MOT and Insurance regulations. Yes the number plate might prove a problem, but in this modern technical age it should be easily surmountable.

The floor is now open.

Regards,
John