4 months tax

[nowtelse2do]

Why cant we have a four month tax for our vehicles? If we could, that would mean we could take them off the road over the winter period, say Nov, Dec, Jan, Feb and then be ready to start again in March. I use my van for every day running (12 months) but I'm sure a lot of you lay them up during this winter period. My problem is with my 2 cars, I can only tax them for 6 months because I don't use them over the winter, so I can never make my mind up as to which month to choose for re-taxing them eg:- March to August, April to September or May to October. So if I could tax them every 4 months that for me would be great, and for people who don't use their van over the winter that to would be great, and you would (*save) 4 months tax.

* I wonder if that could be the reason. A dirty word now in this country :-(

Dave.

[David Dwight]

You can have tax for as long as you want, just SORN a vehicle and reclaim the tax.

[davenewellhome]

What would be even better would be to scrap road fund licence altogether and put it on fuel. That way no one could avoid it as we all have to buy fuel (well except those that steal it but we'll ignore that for now), there would no longer be any need to declare vehicles SORN or otherwise and we could have an MOT disc in the window (although with the new computerised system that is not really necessary). Plus we would all be paying road tax on an as and when basis and totally based against fuel consumption.

 

It'll never happen though :-( .

 

D.

[nowtelse2do]

David Dwight - 2010-03-02 8:30 PM You can have tax for as long as you want, just SORN a vehicle and reclaim the tax.

Good idea Dave, never thought of that. Tax for a year then use for 7 or 8 months then claim 4 or 5 months back, I think the brain as been hibernating :D

Dave

[nowtelse2do]

Dave,

I would love to agree with you but I've reservation,s on that, It's been talked about for along while but don't you think that fuel is taxed enough and anyone who needs their car for work would suffer badly, I know they would be reimbursed but not fully I'm sure.

Dave

[Guest peter]

nowtelse2do - 2010-03-02 8:47 PM

David Dwight - 2010-03-02 8:30 PM You can have tax for as long as you want, just SORN a vehicle and reclaim the tax.

Good idea Dave, never thought of that. Tax for a year then use for 7 or 8 months then claim 4 or 5 months back, I think the brain as been hibernating :D

Dave

That's what I do on my MG, tax it for 12 months and use it for 6, then reclaim 6 Months. As it's cheaper than taxing it for 6 Months only. You can download and print out the re-claim form.

[davenewellhome]

The beauty of putting RFL on fuel is that those who do higher mileages and/or run thirsty vehicles will pay more and the low mileage users and those with economical vehicles will pay less. Why is that not fairer than the present system where it costs me £165 a year to tax my motorhome to do less than 2000 miles a year while a rep doing 60,000 a year pays the same or even less?

 

D.

[Guest Tracker]

And then the car tax disc could be abolished and replaced with two other discs to prove Insurance and MOT at very little extra cost to owners and no cost at all to the government as all the data already exists thus saving many millions of pounds - and a few jobs at DVLA.

 

Perhaps that is just too simple to really work - or is it?

[malc d]

If all the tax was on fuel it could cause a problem with haulage costs (?)

 

I don't know what trucks pay at the moment for road tax but if the 'fuel tax' increased their costs above their current road tax the price of everything would rise.

 

 

:-(

[David Dwight]

Malc

 

Transport firms could fill up at lorry only pumps priced at lower tax or use red diesel.

 

Dave

 

The rep who does 60,000 miles a near do's not pay for his fuel his company would but he would no doubt collect the tesco points etc.

 

 

David.

[Guest Tracker]

malc d - 2010-03-03 10:53 AM

 

If all the tax was on fuel it could cause a problem with haulage costs (?)

 

:-(

 

Not if part of it were a higher rate VAT which, unlike fuel duty, is recoverable by business users and haulage companies.

 

The government is well capable of creating differing tax bands for different groups as well as differing VAT recovery levels and think of all those lovely new jobs for the boys creating and administering it all!

[CliveH]

The cost of collecting Car Tax is very high. They say that re-introducing a Dog Licence would be too costly but they accept the cost of the RFL.

 

It really should be on fuel. Why do i who has a large vehicle to tow a c'van be penalised for owning such a vehicle that only does a few thousand miles a year and yet the rep in his vectra/whatever does 10 times the miles that i do!

 

Once again the inequitable stance of government indicates that tax is applied more on the grounds of envy and PC'ness rather than sound fiscal common sense.

 

Most EU countries DO have their RFL now applied to the cost of fuel - and they still have fuel a bit cheaper than we pay now!

 

>:-(

[Guest Tracker]

CliveH - 2010-03-03 2:00 PM

Most EU countries DO have their RFL now applied to the cost of fuel - and they still have fuel a bit cheaper than we pay now!

>:-(

 

They also don't have Grasping Gordon holding the purse strings!

[flicka]

davenewell@home - 2010-03-02 8:46 PM

 

What would be even better would be to scrap road fund licence altogether and put it on fuel. That way no one could avoid it as we all have to buy fuel (well except those that steal it but we'll ignore that for now), there would no longer be any need to declare vehicles SORN or otherwise and we could have an MOT disc in the window (although with the new computerised system that is not really necessary). Plus we would all be paying road tax on an as and when basis and totally based against fuel consumption.

 

It'll never happen though :-( .

 

D.

I do think RFL should be scrapped and put on fuel, that way motorists & the transport industry pay proportional to their use.

I think we may eventually finish up with a combination of RFL & Fuel Tax.

 

It would also collect "tax" from all the foriegn lorries on our roads, which they all appear to get away with currently.

But we still require SORN in some format.

All those vehicles currently under SORN are OFF the Roads.

If the government / authorities removed the requirement to declare a vehicle off road all the scrap vehicles would be littering town streets & country lanes.

 

[Guest Tracker]

Wouldn't a current MOT, if needed, and an insurance disc be enough to prove entitlement to be on the road and failure to display either would be the same as not showing a current tax disc - in fact it would be better as the current tax disc does not establish current MOT or insurance exists as it only proves that they did exist on the date of issue.

[W3526602]

Oy!

 

What about us what drives tax exempt vehicles? We usualy drive a taxed vehicle too, so HMG is not actually losing anything.

 

Twenty years ago, the Post Office was paid about £0.75 to process tax applications, presumably its more now. So why do DVLA charge us £2 to make an on-line tax application using a credit card .... seeing as they don't have to pay the PO. But there is no charge if you use a debit card.

 

If you intend to surrender your tax disc part way thru the year, it makes economic sense to tax it for 12 months ...... costs less, but you get same refund.

 

602

[Mel B]

I would think that you get charged for using your credit card because the credit card company charge a 'commission' to the receiving company (in this case the DVLA) for providing a way of money being paid easily to them and for you being given credit, the debit card company (bank etc) do not get charged a commission as it is a direct charge against your funds and there is no commission or risk involved as, probably, there is no 'credit' (loan) to take account of.

[Guest Tracker]

W3526602 - 2010-03-07 6:56 AM

So why do DVLA charge us £2 to make an on-line tax application using a credit card .

 

You do have the choice of whether to pay a £2 CC charge for the simple convenience of an instant and time saving transaction or not!

 

How would you use the time saved - answers on the back of a used tenner please!

 

If it bothers you why not either use a debit card and get the same time saving convenience - or better still walk to the PO and cost the government 75p - as well as supporting your local PO.

 

So there you have it - to be public spirited or not!

 

Simples!

 

As to why do they do it - because they can!

[W3526602]

Hi Tracker.

 

There used to be a sub-post office at the end of our road (didn't do car tax, though). Almost always a queue.

 

Then they closed it down. We now have to walk a mile to the PO, even bigger queue. Or you can drive, find somewhere to park, then walk a quarter mile. The High Street is full of parked cars .... which belong to the residents of the flats above the shops. But thats another rant.

 

What's wrong with walking a mile? Try it with gout!

 

There is one PO where the bloke behind the counter tells his customers they should support him, because staff at DVLA will steal their cheques. Yeah, it happened .... once .... 20 years ago.

 

602

[Tony Jones]

I agree with Dave about putting it on fuel.

 

In fact, assuming that for the environment "motoring bad, public transport good," it makes sense to transfer as much of the cost as possible to a mileage basis.

 

At present, tax, MoT and insurance are all annual charges - whether paid by instalments or not. So having laid out several hundred pounds a year for the right to drive on the roads at all, it makes economic sense to drive as much as possible. The extra cost (in fuel and depreciation) of any given journey is likely to be far lower than any realistic public transport fare.

 

But if road tax was on fuel, insurance charged "per 100 miles," and MoT due every (say) 10,000 miles, then only the "age" element of depreciation would be a "fixed cost." Everything else would depend on how much you use the vehicle. That should mean more journeys would be made by public transport - even though most people would keep a vehicle for some purposes anyway.

 

Three problems of course:

 

(1) enforcement - couldn't be done automatically from a "disc" alone, a vehicle's legality would depend on its mileage. But a real human enforcement officer (police, highways, council) could look in and see the mileage easily enough.

 

(2) those in rural areas, where there's no alternative to the car, would pay more. But it shouldn't be rocket-science to devise some kind of annual rebate.

 

(3) much more of a problem - the Govt can't be trusted to make the change "revenue-neutral" overall. They'd inevitably use any change to the system to increase the total take!!

 

[donna miller]

I've been saying for years that the road fund licence should be scrapped and extra duty put on fuel. The governments argument has always been that the tax disc system is an ideal way for them to keep check on the insurance and mot status of a vehicle, as you needed to produce both to obtain a tax disc.

With the advent of computerised mot's and MID, this argument no longer holds any water. I won't however, hold my breath for the change.

 

On the insurance side of things, there are several companies who now do a 'pay as you drive scheme', they fit a tracker to your vehicle and you only pay when it's on the move. This might be a viable solution for folks who do not use their vans much during the year, but again, the costs involved need to be carefully worked out, we only pay about £200 a year for fully comp on a £20k van, so it's going to be hard to make savings on that.