Tax following death

davidh71

Not sure if my understanding is correct so am hoping someone may be able to correct me / confirm my understanding.

My father died on 23/05. His tax ran out on 31/05 and he had not renewed it.

I cannot renew it in his name now because once his death is registered the tax will not be valid, and he is already dead.

We will be selling the car, so although we can keep the car off the road at the moment, when it comes to selling it any prospective buyers will likely want to see the car on the road for a test drive.

His insurance company informed us we had 28 days grace period where the insurance would still be valid (I am an additional driver on the policy). However, if the car is not taxed will this mean the insurance is no longer valid?

DVLA have not been much help and have just requested I send the details up to them. This will prevent them from chasing the lapse in car tax for the time being, but still does not help when it comes to selling it.

Once his affairs are settled then one solution would be to transfer the car into my name prior to selling, however this would obviously devalue the car for us and any prospective buyer.

Am I missing something or is this all correct and the new system is a bit lacking in these circumstances?

Keep_pedalling

As executor you can tax the car as the registered keeper you do not need to wait until probate is granted.

a.turner

The lack of tax will not have an effect on the insurance status, it will still be valid.

Sammy2018

On a side note, could you tax the car for just 1 month? Or does it have to be in 6-month intervals?

Keep_pedalling

Sammy2018 wrote: »

On a side note, could you tax the car for just 1 month? Or does it have to be in 6-month intervals?

No it is 6 months minimum.

MovingForwards

Or pay monthly by direct debit and stop the DD when the car is sold. Costs an extra couple of quid over the year.

Technically you can still insure it as well, that's what my firm did when a client died and there were two cars owned by him, one was a classic car.

TripleH

We as a family have just had to do this, I will outline what happened for the benefit of the Op and other users.

- We registered my father's death on the gov.uk website which in effect ended the road tax in his name on his car.
- My mum then took the V5 form in to the Post Office to get it changed into her her name and then had to book road tax on the car in her name at the same time.
- My dad's estate would be then refunded the unused road tax which would go to his estate
- When my dad's car was sold, the refund of road tax went back to my mum (the registered keeper of the car when sold)

We were lucky that the car was off the road on a drive the whole time of the change over and as with the Op, my mother was a named driver on the car (insurance co. asked us to ring them once it was sold so they could refund what was left).

I think in these situations that it is unfair that the new owner has to buy a full month's road tax when only unused months from the previous owner will be refunded. In our case as with the Op. it was the end of the month and we didn't loose out.