fined £548 for not having road tax, !!!!!!? Need advice

droopsnoot

Some vaguely related comments to things on this thread, not all directly linked to the original post:

There are two different offences - failing to display a disc (which will be gone in October when discs are no longer issued) and keeping a vehicle without having a valid license. I suspect the sharp increase in the size of the OPs fine will be linked to not having attended the first court summons, for whatever reason. Like when parking tickets go from £45 to £450 as soon as the courts get involved.

And some other snippets, from House of Commons Standard Note 1482 from March of this year:

SN1482 wrote:

Historically the Road Fund was used for the building and upkeep of roads. The Road Fund received the money derived from the taxation of motor vehicles, collected by county councils, and it paid it back to local authorities to finance expenditure incurred on road maintenance. The Fund was in practice never spent in full and was notorious for being raided for other purposes. Hypothecation was formally ended by the [FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Finance Act 1936[/FONT][/FONT]. During a contemporary debate, Winston Churchill remarked on the Fund:

"I am not even going to criticise my right hon. friend's treatment of the Raid Fund—I mean the Road Fund. That is the sort of thing that slips off one's tongue in an unguarded moment, but I agree with the Chancellor that it is a monstrous assertion that any important body of taxpayers should claim proprietary rights over the particular quota of taxation which they contribute, and that all should not be brought into an area freely justiciable by the House of Commons.8 "

From 1 April 1937 the revenues from motor vehicle taxes were paid directly into the Consolidated Fund. The Road Fund had no revenues of its own and was merely an administrator of the grant-in-aid. The Fund itself was not finally abolished until April 1956 via the [FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]Miscellaneous Financial Provisions Act 1955[/FONT][/FONT].

Later arguments for abolition
[FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]The abolition of VED was proposed in a November 1978 White Paper by the then Labour Government. It anticipated that a 20 pence-per-gallon increase in fuel duty would be required to make the change revenue-neutral.[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Arial]In the first Budget of the incoming Conservative Government, in June 1979, the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Geoffrey Howe, stated that he was reviewing the future of VED.[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]10 [/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]However, Mr Howe announced the following year that he would not abolish it, as per the previous government’s proposal. He recited the reasons for this decision in his 1980 Budget speech: [/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial]
[/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]"... after carefully reviewing the arguments, we decided that that was not a sensible change to make. Even if the tax had gone, the need for a vehicle register would have remained. That is essential to the police and for vehicle control. Much of the form-filling would have continued unabated. We decided that it was much better to keep the vehicle excise duty, but to achieve staff savings by streamlining its administration..."[/FONT]

[/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]The main argument put forward for abolishing VED and raising the money through fuel duty has tended to be that it would encourage the purchase of fuel efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles. According to estimates made by the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) in 1990, the change from taxing ownership to taxing the use of cars would cut car use by eight per cent in a single year.[/FONT][/FONT][FONT=Arial,Arial][FONT=Arial,Arial]The counter argument was that such a move would increase the costs for firms with high mileage costs and for those living in rural areas, and that there could be inflationary consequences. [/FONT][/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Arial]
[FONT=Arial,Arial]More recently, in November 2010 the IFS published the results of the long-running Mirrlees Review of tax reform. As part of its work on motoring taxes this review also questioned whether a tax on vehicle purchase, rather than the annual VED payment, might be better targeted."

[/FONT]

[/FONT]I agree that a small additional levy on petrol would be fairer, and now that there will be no tax disc we're accepting a computerised system now seems to be reliable enough, but the above does at least show that it's been considered rather than ignored.

AdrianC

droopsnoot wrote: »

I agree that a small additional levy on petrol would be fairer

For the average-mileage domestic car driver, maybe. For hauliers, no. I ran the sums a little while back, for a very similar thread elsewhere. To replace VED with additional fuel duty would add about 12p/litre to the price, to be revenue-neutral. For a haulier, that's going to MASSIVELY increase costs. If there's some kind of mechanism to compensate for that, then the rise for Joe Public will be higher per litre. And, of course, higher-mileage users will pay a much higher chunk. That will affect every single business, more severely than domestic users.

If the revenue from VED & fuel duty combined is reduced, then it's going to either hit Gov't finances - already running a huge annual deficit - or taxation elsewhere's going to have to be raised.

VED & fuel duty combined bring in about £30m a year - one third of the total NHS budget, half of the total education budget, or 6/7 of the defence budget.

droopsnoot

AdrianC wrote: »

For the average-mileage domestic car driver, maybe. For hauliers, no.

Yes, I admit I was just thinking of my own situation there. Your calculations do agree with the comments in that paper I quoted above.

Gloomendoom

Has the OP posted up his new court date?

I might go along.

System

Iceweasel wrote: »

Yes, I understand that the name has stuck - but most folks are aware that all vacuum cleaners are not made by Hoover and there are other brands of ball-point pens.

But a great many people are under the impression that what they call 'Road Tax' is actually to pay for the upkeep of the roads.
.

Like they think that National Insurance is supposed to pay for benefits/NHS?

AdrianC

!!!!!! wrote: »

Like they think that National Insurance is supposed to pay for benefits/NHS?

NI is ringfenced. Bit pointless, really, but it is.
http://www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=sn04517

VED/RFL/"Road tax" hasn't been ring-fenced or hypothecated since 1936.

"Car tax" was something else entirely, a 10% duty on the purchase price of new cars, and was dropped in the '80s.

londonTiger

Pay your road tax next time. It's nice to know that law breakers aren't being given the soft treatment for non payment.

Still think that 3 years road tax as a penalty is too soft. 10 years road tax is an adequate fine IMO.

matttye

Fine will be so high because they will have listed your case and, when you failed to attend, you will have been found guilty in your absence. You nor a representative on your behalf put forward any mitigation on your behalf, so the court will have fined you without hearing from you.

You can apply to have the case re-opened on the basis that you didn't receive the summons. This is very common, believe it or not.

ado

matttye wrote: »

You can apply to have the case re-opened on the basis that you didn't receive the summons. This is very common, believe it or not.

Except that someone on here did some detective work and found that the OP had in fact received the summons but then forgot to attend court. They are now lying about it and looking for ways to reduce the fine.

Quentin

matttye wrote: »

You can apply to have the case re-opened on the basis that you didn't receive the summons. This is very common, believe it or not.

The OP did receive the summons!


See George Michael # 65