Road tax period

akkers

Can anyone pls tell me why we still have to buy road tax (Vehicle Execise Duty) for whole calendar months. For example, if you needed to tax your vehicle for 6 months on the 22nd of Jan then you have to have whole of Jan even though there are only 9 days left in Jan. Surely you should get full 6 months, ending on 22nd of the 6th month.


I believe this whole whole month thing was inacted by DVLA because of the tax discs which needed to be colour coded and could only have 4 digits - all this to make it easier for police to check. Now there is no tax disc and information is usually obtained online.


So why are we still being ripped off by the govt and made to pay for full calendar months? If this was being done in the commercial world it would be called a scam and criticised to death.


IMO if you pay for 6 months, you should get 6 months.

droopsnoot

I think the decision to sell it by the calendar month was taken long before tax discs became colour-coded.


The biggest issue with changing it will be the cost (in money and time) of changing the various IT systems that deal only with VED lasting until the end of a specific month, rather than until a specific date. Couple that with it being a fairly unusual requirement to tax a vehicle part-way through a month, and you have the reason why it's unlikely to change.

AdrianC

Simple. Because the entire back-end computer systems are set up for whole-month tax. They didn't need to be anything else until very recently.

How much are we talking about, anyway? The average car on the UK's roads emits CO2 of about 150g/km, the threshold between £145/yr and £180/yr VED on the 2001-17 scale. So that's about three quid a week, less than 50p/day.

How much would reworking the entirety of DVLA's VED computer systems cost...? When it comes to government IT, isn't "Don't fix what isn't broken" a fairly sensible rule of thumb...?

forgotmyname

Lots of cars are less than 10p a day.

AdrianC

Indeed. The average new car in 2016 was £30/year.

foxy-stoat

Its not in the interest of the DVLA to change the system.

I think you get ripped off more on your weekly shopping than on the rare occasion that you buy a part months of VED.

akkers

But I dont think thats the point. If a commercial organisation was doing this then the govt would take them to task. Just because its the govt and they are getting the benfit of hunreds of thousands pounds extra makes them do nothing.
Funny that when they annouce other changes to tax system, the IT systems are amended for the change date, no execuses. And if we were in the EU and this matter was brought before them, then UK would be repimanded.

This, I believe, is done deliberately because they get extra tax. Its blatant and there is no execuse for it.

AdrianC

akkers wrote: »

But I dont think thats the point. If a commercial organisation was doing this then the govt would take them to task.

Do you pay your gym membership by the day, not by the month?

Just because its the govt and they are getting the benfit of hunreds of thousands pounds extra makes them do nothing.

That whinge got old back in 2014 when they actually made the change.

And if we were in the EU and this matter was brought before them, then UK would be repimanded.

So why haven't you done that in the last five years? We still are, so goferit.

This, I believe, is done deliberately because they get extra tax. Its blatant and there is no execuse for it.

No, it was done because still having the primary record of your car tax being a bit of coloured paper in the windscreen is utterly ridiculous in the 21st century.

B'sides, if you believe the scaremongering rags, it's cost the government a fortune, not made them one.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/691510/Paper-tax-disc-scrap-cost-Government-100-MILLION-year

Car_54

akkers wrote: »

But I dont think thats the point. If a commercial organisation was doing this then the govt would take them to task. Just because its the govt and they are getting the benfit of hunreds of thousands pounds extra makes them do nothing.
Funny that when they annouce other changes to tax system, the IT systems are amended for the change date, no execuses. And if we were in the EU and this matter was brought before them, then UK would be repimanded.

This, I believe, is done deliberately because they get extra tax. Its blatant and there is no execuse for it.

If it was a commercial organisation, what law would it be breaking?

What EU regulation is the government breaking?

If it were changed, the (relatively trivial) lost tax revenue would have to be recovered by tax increases elsewhere.

AdrianC

Ah, here we go...

Total annual government receipt from VED - £6.2bn for 18/19.
https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend-by-spend/vehicle-excise-duty/

It was £6.1bn in 2013/14, then dropped to £5.7bn in 2014/15. As a percentage of GDP, it's consistently dropped over the years since CO2 VED was introduced, as the average CO2 and tax cost has dropped rapidly.

Iceweasel

akkers wrote: »

But I dont think thats the point. If a commercial organisation was doing this then the govt would take them to task.

No they wouldn't - the capitalist biased governments we have had in recent years would see to it that received a Queen's Award for Industry for increasing their profits.