Street dealers have untaxed/uninsured cars

EdGasket

Looking for a car recently. I selected filters for 'Private' only (not trade) and yet there were many adverts that when I looked into it, had been placed by 'dealers' trading from home/private house. What's more on checking the tax and insurance of the cars they were selling, found out that although parked on the road and me being offered a test drive, they were either untaxed/uninsured and sometimes both. How do they get away with that? Surely one clamping for lack of tax or one car impounded for no insurance would wipe out most of their profit from many deals; not to mention the possibility of an accident on a test drive!

If I can find so many dodgy/illegal dealers without really trying, why aren't the police or council more proactive in sorting this out?

RS2000.

Money, I guess you've missed the last five years of cuts.

Crabman

They do send out clampers, but they tend to target the innocent motorist who calls DVLA to enquire about this exact issue.

forgotmyname

My local council used to visit a car yard in the dual carriageway, The yard used to park cars in the centre. These had no tax and at first they issued tickets but the yards changed names and they never got paid.

So they arrived with several trucks and towed them instead. They dont park them there anymore except the odd one they leave the trade plate on.

Dont forget the data your looking at is not live also. I bought my car and it took several days for it to show on the DVLA database as being taxed.

loskie

for Trading Standards to class someone selling a car as a "dealer" they will have to sell a certain number of cars a year (I cannot remember how many).
Say I sell 7 cars a year they would class this as a hobby not a trader.

xHannahx

loskie wrote: »

for Trading Standards to class someone selling a car as a "dealer" they will have to sell a certain number of cars a year (I cannot remember how many).
Say I sell 7 cars a year they would class this as a hobby not a trader.

HMRC does not stipulate numbers when asessing whether somebody is actually running a business. Their rules state that anyone who "carries out a transaction or a series of transactions with a view to making a profit" is defined as carrying on a trade.

In all reality if someone only has 1 or 2 cars at a time, I suspect it's ok as long as road legal, they could say it was their personal cars they were selling privately.
My husband used to get bored of his cars within a couple of months and swap or sell them to get something different.

colino

I'm pretty sure the tax dodging driveway dealers invented the "6 a year and your a trader" nonsense. If you buy goods or services (even one)with the intention of selling them for profit, you are a trader. That is why HMRC from time to time does chase ups on those friendly people only, "doing their mates a favour", from mobile hairdressers, ebayers to driveway dealers. All are trading and all are dodging their taxes.

londonTiger

colino wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the tax dodging driveway dealers invented the "6 a year and your a trader" nonsense. If you buy goods or services (even one)with the intention of selling them for profit, you are a trader. That is why HMRC from time to time does chase ups on those friendly people only, "doing their mates a favour", from mobile hairdressers, ebayers to driveway dealers. All are trading and all are dodging their taxes.

so everyone who has ever sold their unwanted goods on ebay is a trader by your defintion then??

tax authorities would disagree - there is not IT for selling your belongings..

I can tell you that HMRC DO NOT do random visits like this. They dont have reosurces to do this. They do have records of everyones bank balances and have algorithims to detect whether the bank balances corroborate with their declared means, but they won't just turn up on someone's door who sold a few things on ebay- firstly the tax is probably negligable, secondly inland revenue tax inspectors aren't exactly minimum wage workers on zero hours contracts. They are well paid and takes a lot of man hours to put together a case to investigate someone's tax affairs.

RS2000.

londonTiger wrote: »

so everyone who has ever sold their unwanted goods on ebay is a trader by your defintion then??

tax authorities would disagree - there is not IT for selling your belongings..

If you read what he actually wrote you'll see not.

!!!!!! you even quoted him.

colino wrote: »

I'm pretty sure the tax dodging driveway dealers invented the "6 a year and your a trader" nonsense. If you buy goods or services (even one)with the intention of selling them for profit, you are a trader. That is why HMRC from time to time does chase ups on those friendly people only, "doing their mates a favour", from mobile hairdressers, ebayers to driveway dealers. All are trading and all are dodging their taxes.

Not unwanted goods.

londonTiger

Also why is everyone jumping on the tax evasion bandwagon?? This is just mere speculation and you can complain to HMRC tax evasion line but without any concrete proof this is just speculation.

What is of concern is your council trading laws. They use council property to do business on, then you owe the council rent and rates. (Also breaking their bylaws on what the public roads can be used for).

That is your first port of call before jumping on the tax evasion bandwagon. Unfortunately council are just as beauracratic as the inland revenue and will take 10 of them to produce a report to take action. Meaning, they probably won't.

It's sort of hard to prove that someone is trading in the absense of clear signage (with pricing) and/or dvla records. I reckon the registered keeper is probably left to the previous owner. So it never comes up as under the traders personal name or company name.

Traffic wardens don't care about the road tax/insurance status, if it has a permit -that's all that matters. police with ANPR dont go round swooping though tight residental roads scanning the reg markers of parked cars.

colino

LT I realise you are hard of understanding , try reading exactly what I wrote. Incidentally, HMRC most certainly do target groups, not random visits. Using a thing they call technology, the last time they targeted ebayers for example, their initial letter drop went to 35,000 people. Not random, not simply because they had an ebay account, not because a neighbour complained about them.
Perhaps you protest too much?