Can I fight tax disc fine or should I pay up?

Rover_Driver

HappyMJ wrote: »

It sounds to me like the automatic penalty that comes in the mail when you forget to tax or SORN your vehicle on time.

If it is a FPN then that FPN has to be withdrawn and the matter taken to court. However, if the police did pull the OP they would have only reported the matter to the DVLA for them to take action. It's very unlikely that the police officer would issue a FPN and follow it through to court.

If it was the automatic penalty, it would be a Late Licensing Penalty, not a Fixed Penalty Notice.


The offence of failing to display a licence is dealt with by police - they are the ones who have witnessed the offence - usually by FPN but can be by summons. Normal police procedure is to inform DVLA who may take further action if the vehicle was unlicensed.

The offence of not having a licence and the Late Licensing Penalty are dealt with by DVLA - they use their records as to the status of the licence and and deal with the matter accordingly.


A Fixed Penalty Notice is not withdrawn for a court case, you have to reject the notice and ask that the matter be dealt with at magistrate's court.

If it is not rejected and is unpaid, it is an automatic process that it is increased by 50% and treated by the court as an unpaid fine.

SingleSue

I' ve just read the renewal reminder for my tax and it says

"You will have an extra five working days to display your old tax disc if you tax your vehicle online or by phone on or before 31st March 2012"

Obviously this was for new car tax due to start 1st April.

Rover_Driver

Yes you have five working days allowance to display a new licence, but only if it is applied for before the old one expired.
If the old licence has expired, there is no allowance.

Notmyrealname

lemontart wrote: »

how many days after the old one expired was this, if 5 or less and you still had old one displayed it whilst waiting for new one should be ok if longer then no you have to pay also if you had no disc at all, check the faq's on their website about this

Completely wrong. That only applies if you apply for a new tax disc before the old one runs out. The old one had run out. The OP was keeping the car on the road without displaying a valid VED disc which is what they have been fined for.

Pay up, you're guilty.

Lum

There are two separate things you can be done for when it comes to road tax.

There's the one for not renewing or SORNing your vehicle. This is issued by the DVLA and is fairly easy to challenge since the DVLA aren't the police and thus can't issue fines.

There's "failure to display" which is usually issued by the police or traffic wardens. You can be done for this even if you have a tax disc in force but it just happened to fall off the windscreen. I'm guessing this is the one the OP has been done for.

You could certainly try it on, write back to the fixed penalty office with proof that you had a tax disc that was valid for that day (a photocopy of the disc should suffice) and see if they will let it go, but if they don't then I'd just pay it rather than let it go to court.

MiM

Thanks all, even those who said, 'You're guilty, pay up'.

I know that technically I am guilty but I think it's unfair.

The law is there to prevent people making the rest of us pay more by not taxing their vehicles.

That was never my intention and I can prove it because I had already paid for the whole year - including the days that had already passed that month - by the time the offence was reported. A check of their electronic records before sending out the notice would have told them I'd just shelled out £265 to them.

I think I might have been detected by one of those vans at the side of the road because the time is 8.55am near my workplace. It was March 19 so I'm well out of any grace period.

I think HappyMJ might have mixed this up with a car park "fine", which I know is merely a bill with a civil course of action for recovery.

Once before I took advice of a police traffic officer that the police wouldn't puruse a £60 speeding fine for being 5mph over in a roadworks area where no work was goin on.

I ended up with a £265 fine imposed by the Magistrates Court.

I'm going to try writing as I don't think it's right that I shoudl pay a penalty that's there to deter peopel from doing something I wasn't doing.

However, I think I've got no chance because if they give in to me it wold set a precedent that cold cut off a useful revenue stream to DVLA.

HappyMJ

What do you actually have? A late licensing penalty from the DVLA or a failure to display FPN from a police officer? A late licensing penalty from the DVLA is easily challenged and even completely ignored and will never end up as a fine. A FPN from a police officer can be taken to court and can end up as a fine.

The DVLA rarely take late licensing penalty's to court any more as it wasn't generating enough revenue. They just sell the debt onto debt collection agencies now for them to harass you until they give up.

Lum

MiM wrote: »

I think I might have been detected by one of those vans at the side of the road because the time is 8.55am near my workplace.

If the tax disc had been issued at that point, it will not have been a van that got you. Those vans do not do fancy image processing to investigate your windscreen and see if a tax disc is present. They just do ANPR to read your numberplate and check it against the database to see if you have tax or not.

vax2002

If the OP spent less time biting at folk and answered the ruddy question we might, just be able to help.
The question :
What is the offence ?
Last try ...

s_b

OP is guilty
hang im hi