Road Tax Paid Twice but DVLA Refused to Refund - advice Needed with Thanks

SunnyJane

Hi All,

I have got a tricky scenario here - my car was double road taxed but DVLA refused to refund the double tax.

My car was initially taxed in January for 12 months but in June I had to ask my husband to submit a SORN declaration on my behalf because of a family crisis. He submit SORN declaration on line but unfortunately forgot to submit a road tax refund application - there was nowhere on the web reminding applicant that a refund application should be submit as well.

The car was again taxed in July for another 12 months. Only by August I realised he did not submit a tax refund application so did one immediately by then/August.

Now DVLA refused to refund the road tax for July and August and they said they only calculate the refund based on the month they receive a refund application. That means my car was under 'double tax' for both July and August and DVLA decided not to refund the double tax.

Anyone in the forum has the similar experience or know what is the policy on this, or know how to handle this? I feel by doing this DVLA simply ripping off my money but don't know what else I can do. Any advice would be really appreciated!

Many thanks!

droopsnoot

I just tried to look up the DVLA rules on this, unfortunately their site only deals with the situation now. Right now, it says "You’ll get an automatic refund of your vehicle tax for any full remaining months when you make a SORN. It will be sent to the address on theDVLA record."

But obviously that applies to the current system where there is no paper disc. Previously, to get a refund, you had to send the disc back to the DVLA in the post, and they would base the refund date on the postmark of the envelope you send it back in. So if you didn't send back the disc, they wouldn't process a refund. I wouldn't have expected them to process one after the event, especially if the disc hasn't been returned during that period.

There is an argument that it shouldn't be possible to double tax a car - if you go to the DVLA (or PO) and attempt to tax a car that already has tax, they should say so. From a computer system point of view that would be really easy to do, but then so are a lot of things that the various government computer systems don't do.

bod1467

But the computer system (correctly) said the vehicle was SORN, so taxing it in July was a valid action.

The fact the refund action was previously divorced from the SORN action may or may not have been a deliberate ploy, but it was for the owner of the tax disc to apply for the refund - failure to do so did not cancel the SORN.

OP - if you have sent in the old tax disc in a refund request then the most you could (now) expect back would be 2 months (November and December).

Johno100

Sounds like your husband owes you either a meal out or a box of chocolates, depending on the tax classification of your vehicle.:D