Tax Free Car - Clamped and Fined

The_Grateful_Ghoul

Apologies in advance if this has happened to anyone before. But I am a non-driver and I had a call from my upset wife today after her Tax-Free car was clamped and forced to pay £260 to release it on a supermarket carpark.

She purchased the car from a garage about 18 months ago and one of the big selling points for her was that this model did not require road tax due to low carbon emissions. So today she was clamped and told she needs to logon to the DVLA website each year to keep the car registered for free tax. But has never received a letter or told at any point she would need to do this.

Has anyone else been a victim of this and have any advice? No worries if not, now she knows, it won't happen again. But thought I would post in case others out there didn't know.

debtdebt

Most people know this.

The car isn't tax free. It's nil rated tax which means you still have to tax the car but you don't have to pay a fee.

The_Grateful_Ghoul

One of those things that will only happen once as it's a steep learning curve that will ensure she won't forget again. I just wish someone had mentioned it when she first purchased the car or a letter saying re-register in 12 months rather than assuming she would know.

AdrianC

Does she have the V5C in her name and at the current address? If so, she would have been sent a V11 VED renewal reminder.

As debtdebt said - yes, it's £0, but it still needs doing in exactly the same way. And if ever it's off the road and the insurance is cancelled, it still needs SORNing.

The only difference is literally that it's £0...

The_Grateful_Ghoul

She has the V5C form and used that number to re-register it sounds like the reminder for whatever reason never made it here. Added to the calendar now so it won't happen again. Thanks guys.

EdGasketTheSecond

Utterly stupid system. It is quite natural to think that a zero-rated car won't need taxing but oh no that would be too simple.

Takmon

EdGasketTheSecond wrote: »

Utterly stupid system. It is quite natural to think that a zero-rated car won't need taxing but oh no that would be too simple.

No it's not stupid because the DVLA want to keep an updated record of which cars are on and off the road. If zero rated cars didn't require taxing then people would be far less likely to bother with SORN and this would mean the records would be far less accurate for these cars.

Car_54

Easily solved. Replace the zero rate with a nominal tenner, which shouldn’t cause any hardship. Offset with a commensurate reduction for all other cars (like mine!).

peter_the_piper

This seems to be an unfortunate event, my car is £0 tax, as are many thousands and we don't have problems. It seems that the OP did not fill in all the forms and chase DVLA when papers did not arrive.

onomatopoeia99

Takmon wrote: »

No it's not stupid because the DVLA want to keep an updated record of which cars are on and off the road. If zero rated cars didn't require taxing then people would be far less likely to bother with SORN and this would mean the records would be far less accurate for these cars.

Or they could just make SORN automatic if tax is not bought when required.

AdrianC

onomatopoeia99 wrote: »

Or they could just make SORN automatic if tax is not bought when required.

No, because SORN is an active declaration on the keeper's part - "This car really is off the road, intentionally so, and I do faithfully promise that it will stay there."

Remember, VED is used as much for tracking which cars and keepers are still extant as anything else.

Basically, keeping your car licensed once a year is one of the most basic responsibilities of a registered keeper. If you can't even cope with that, the system shouldn't be the one to change.