Road fund ripoff

Cornucopia

The smaller your VED bill, the less relevant this "rip-off" becomes.

Mine is £30 - one month is worth £2.50.

Joe_Horner

Got to say I'm generally with those saying this is out of order.

Never mind that it's "only £x":

(a) It will tend to affect those at lower incomes more (they tend to buy older cars, with higher tax, and change them more often). Regardless of the amounts involved, a tax system that has a greater impact on low earners is inherently unfair. Even if that's an unintentional bias, it's (yet more) evidence of how completely out of touch the government is with those at the lower end and how uninterested they are in even trying to understanding the problems of low income.

(b) It's completely avoidable. There is no good reason whatsoever for VED to run by the full calendar month if it doesn't involve those pre-printed paper disks.

It would also be entirely possible - and provide the same safeguard against dishonesty - to arrange the new system so that tax expires at the end of the month a sale occurs in rather than the beginning. That part isn't refundable anyway, so a seller couldn't mislead a buyer with it.

In fact, that would be the only logical way of doing it unless the increased revenue this will raise was an (unpublicised) intentional part of the plan. In which case it is sneaky and is a "stealth tax" regardless of the individual sums involved.

motorguy

Cornucopia wrote: »

The smaller your VED bill, the less relevant this "rip-off" becomes.

Mine is £30 - one month is worth £2.50.

Same here. And the dealer generously taxed it for a year when i bought it. :beer:

wotme

motorguy wrote: »

Put it in the road from the first of the month then.

Its a money saving forum not a tax evasion forum.

Can I suggest you look up the difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance and apologise

londonTiger

wotme wrote: »

I notice that as from the 1st October 2014 the requirement to display a tax disc will cease. Furthermore when you sell a car you cant pass on any remaining tax. When you sell your car you get a refund for any whole months left since you taxed the car. The new owner will have to apply for a new licence.
It appears that for every car sale after October 1st gov.uk will be quid's in, because the seller who sells will get a refund, but will not get a refund for the current month, that will be "lost" in much the same way as a tax disc is refunded now.

The catch is the new owner will have to tax the car from the beginning of the same month so its win win for gov.uk for every second hand car sale in the UK. I have seen figures which suggest this could amount to some £300,000pa, not a bad little earner!

Apart from selling the car at a second to midnight and buying one second after midnight on the last day of a month :-) Does anybody have any ideas how to deal with this.

If you think the government is so conniving that they will introduce a whole new system just so they can nab 1 month extra of road tax when a car changes hands you must have a very cynical view of how the government operates.

Government likes to tax, they take thousands from you in income tax, will they really bother to go through all this just to get £10 more from you?

There are many benefits from this - you can just purchase tax and not have to bother about the crappy royal mail taking 5 days to deliver 1st class mail. (I live in London and get 1st class mail 2-3 days after it is posted over)

It frees up a spot on your windscreen!! Imagine driving around with extra visibility on the corner of your windscreen. Just need the council to remove their resident permit display requirement and we'll be driving around with better view.

It only inconveniences traders who have to tax the car while they keep it in their possesion, where in the past they would have been able to use the old tax disk while they flip it.

It's high time they modernised the system, quite frankly the system is archaic. In a world where we have ANPR & CCTV everywhere and the ability to look up tax status automatically by computer what is the point of physically displaying a tax disc?

My only gripe is the double taxing, based on the comments I've read it appears that the new owner has to get tax from day of ownership but the previous owner will get refund from tax left from full calendar months.

That's cheeky. The new owner should get a grace until the next calender month if it has already been taxed by previous owner.

facade

londonTiger wrote: »

If you think the government is so conniving that they will introduce a whole new system just so they can nab 1 month extra of road tax when a car changes hands you must have a very cynical view of how the government operates.

Government likes to tax, they take thousands from you in income tax, will they really bother to go through all this just to get £10 more from you?

You and the 6,999,999 other sales that it will apply to makes it a nice little earner thankyou

And as we said in the other thread "They can easily put "a couple of quid" a month on it, and no-one will notice: remember the thread where someone couldn't afford £400 a year VED, but could afford £40 a month?

Every penny adds up when you are dealing with big numbers.
They are not stupid (nor clever-just very cunning ) They think we are stupid

harveybobbles

Don't get why people are annoyed by this..

Change cars on the last day of the month. Simple.

wotme

harveybobbles wrote: »

Don't get why people are annoyed by this..

Change cars on the last day of the month. Simple.

You haven't quite grasped this yet, imagine you are the buyer buying a car on the 31st of a month, you will have to tax (or whatever you want to call it) backdated to the 1st of that month. So you now have a car that will have to be "taxed" again in 11 months. Still like the idea?

wotme

Can I ask the question I really asked at the beginning.

The system is changing so you simply "tax" your car online and you get a refund for the car you sold. As the online facility is available 24/7, surely it should be possible to request a refund because you have sold the car on the last day of a month and the purchaser goes online on the 1st of the month to tax the car again. There isn't a gap in dates so in theory it should be ok, and in reality not many transactions will be very close together anyway. If I sell my car to you, and I don't let you go online to tax it, there will be a delay.

The wording on the gov.uk website states "you will need to get new vehicle tax before you can use the vehicle" . I would guess that it might be permissible to "tax" the car on the 1st of the month, providing it is taxed before you used it on the road.

I will look at the rules with interest when they are published in a couple of months.


By the way, if I have to pay something I will, if I don't have to, I don't. If someone knocked your door and asked for £5, you wouldn't give it them, neither would you shut the door if they gave you a fiver.

Retrogamer

From what i read, when a vehicle changes hands the tax is removed and refunded automatically to the previous owner.

If this is the case and you go to buy second had, would this not mean you would be unable to tax the car until the log book is returned in your name?