Unable to renew car tax as the MOT does not appear to have been extended due to Coronavirus-19

buglawton

1L was a sweet spot because before 2017 my wife's 1L car fell between 101-110 g/km - £20.

Buying a car today it would have to be at today's rates:
51 - 75  £25 / 76 - 90 £110 / 91 - 100 £135 / 101 - 110 £155 (all £5 less after 1st year).

Manufacturers are doing all kinds of tricks to get under some limit but the Mrs' car is a simple manual / 3 cylinder 1L engine with no turbo. Just how it should be and very nice to drive too. The same car today would cost £1500 over ten years to tax instead of the £200 ours did over 10 years. Insignificant?

AdrianC

buglawton said:

1L was a sweet spot because before 2017 my wife's 1L car fell between 101-110 g/km - £20. 

Exactly... VED hasn't been banded on engine size since 2001. It has been banded on CO2. CO2 is more-or-less proportional to fuel economy, and - yes - smaller is often more economical.

We have a 1.2 - it's band G, £205. A friend has just sold a 1.4, band H, £240.

buglawton

Yes and I don't recall saying it was banded by engine capacity. Just that a 1L car worked out very nicely - in the old days. All in all VED seems to have gone up hugely under the false pretence of reducing CO2. No incentive for low mileage drivers then.

AdrianC

buglawton said:

Yes and I don't recall saying it was banded by engine capacity.

Then let me remind you...

buglawton said:

I reckon that by choosing a used car with a small as opposed to medium sized engine 10 years ago, I've saved a tidy £1000. ... 1L was a sweet spot for VED

Engine size does not directly affect VED, except for pre-2001-registered cars, and only since 1999.

Just that a 1L car worked out very nicely - in the old days.

Again - no, a low emission car worked out very nicely.

Not all low emission cars are small engine, not all small engine cars are low emission.

All in all VED seems to have gone up hugely under the false pretence of reducing CO2.

The average new car VED in 2016 was £30/year.
The last time it was that price was 1974. And that's before taking inflation into account.

The move from CO2-banding to only CO2-banding the first VED payment of a new car was done precisely because the tax-incentivised CO2-reductions had been too effective, and revenue had dropped.

BTW, £140/year flat-rate VED was last seen in 1995.
VED for a pre-CO2 car is currently £165 for <1550cc, £270 above. A CO2-taxed car would have to be band F or J to be more expensive.

When CO2-taxing first replaced the short-lived engine-size link in 2001, VED did rise for some particularly dirty-for-engine-size cars, <1550cc that emitted more than about 150g, bigger that emitted more than about 190. But over the years of CO2 taxing, it did exactly what it was intended to do, and the average new car dropped rapidly in CO2.

No incentive for low mileage drivers then.

Let's say "low-mileage" means 5,000 miles/year.
At £1.20/litre and 45mpg average, that's 500 litres used in the year.  78p/litre of tax (20p VAT and 58p duty) means £390.

£110 VED difference is not exactly a world-changer in that context, especially once £2,000 VAT on a £12,000 new car is also taken into account - before we even consider ~£2,000/year depreciation.

buglawton

Thanks for doing the calculation. Our family cars are well into bangernomics territory now despite being known quantities and reliable. Basically the annual tax would jump from £20 to £150 for a similar car to our 1L veteran. 1L really was a sweet spot for us then, and would not be now. Due to us having 2 cars, that one only does 3k miles pa these days.

storth

To get back to the original issue; my first MOT should have been due 7th June. I SORNed my (motorhome) PLG in March. Despite the advice in today's MSE no extension has been applied. I have emailed DVLA as advised on its website to no effect so far. No tax ,no vehicle, no escape from lockdown. DVLA needs to get its finger out. Martin please note!! 

storth

There seems to have been an issue with the data transfer from the DVLA to our database, this is why the MOT due date is not displaying correctly and the 6 month extension has not been added. I have submitted a request for the data to be updated manually, however this may take a few days due to demand and this being quite a complex process.

Email from DVSA after I called them. It took an hour to get through but they took my VIN number rather than as advised on the website to email V5 reference and reg number. There is a backlog relating to problems with motorhome first registration process at DVLA apparently. Should we be surprised?