Daily Car Insurance and SORN

Vistan

Hi there,

I am looking to tax my car, and only take out daily car insurance policies as I only use the car very irregularly. (plus the cheapest annual insurance I can find has jumped up this year from £525 to £825, despite having an extra years NCD etc..! crazy insurers).

However, can anyone please enlighten me on how it works in terms of tax?- I believe that if you car does not have a SORN, then it must be insured at all times- otherwise you will be fined by the DVLA.

Many thanks!

Ditzy_Mitzy

I believe that you can use a temporary insurance policy to tax a car, but from that point onwards the car must stay insured, under any policy you like - temporary or permanent, until it is again declared SORN.   Thus you'd have to declare it SORN again as soon as you'd finished using it if you didn't want to carry on insuring.  You'd then only get a refund for the 'unused' months of the tax disc, figuratively speaking I know there isn't a real tax disc, purchased.  If you then decided to use the car again in the same month e.g. January, you'd have to pay again for tax for January, that you already paid for prior to declaring SORN and didn't have refunded.  Either that or you'd need to buy further temporary insurance. 
The short answer is that such action is completely pointless and, possibly, can cause issues if the MID database isn't immediately updated to reflect the details of the temporary cover.  In such an eventuality you may find yourself unable to tax the car and needing to go to a Post Office to do so.  
It would be far more sensible to look for a limited mileage policy or even, if you really don't use the car much and have off-road parking, considering a 'modern classic' car eligible for a classic car insurance policy.  Those are very cheap and if the car's more than 25 years old you get free tax too. 

davidmcn

I thought daily car insurance was only to add a driver to an otherwise-insured vehicle (e.g. while you borrow somebody else's car, or for the specific days your teenager is learning to drive).

Ditzy_Mitzy

davidmcn said:

I thought daily car insurance was only to add a driver to an otherwise-insured vehicle (e.g. while you borrow somebody else's car, or for the specific days your teenager is learning to drive).

Not necessarily, it's a proper fully comprehensive insurance policy that doesn't require any additional insurance to be in place for the car.  The only problem is that of the continuous insurance requirement, you'd either have to declare the car SORN at the point the policy ran out or extend the insurance.  You can use temporary insurance for whatever you want it for including insuring your own car.  It's fiercely expensive, too.

Vistan

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

I believe that you can use a temporary insurance policy to tax a car, but from that point onwards the car must stay insured, under any policy you like - temporary or permanent, until it is again declared SORN.   Thus you'd have to declare it SORN again as soon as you'd finished using it if you didn't want to carry on insuring.  You'd then only get a refund for the 'unused' months of the tax disc, figuratively speaking I know there isn't a real tax disc, purchased.  If you then decided to use the car again in the same month e.g. January, you'd have to pay again for tax for January, that you already paid for prior to declaring SORN and didn't have refunded.  Either that or you'd need to buy further temporary insurance. 
The short answer is that such action is completely pointless and, possibly, can cause issues if the MID database isn't immediately updated to reflect the details of the temporary cover.  In such an eventuality you may find yourself unable to tax the car and needing to go to a Post Office to do so.  
It would be far more sensible to look for a limited mileage policy or even, if you really don't use the car much and have off-road parking, considering a 'modern classic' car eligible for a classic car insurance policy.  Those are very cheap and if the car's more than 25 years old you get free tax too. 

Thank you for your response; very helpful!

Ridiculous really that Tax is 'attached' to insurance in the way that you need both of them or none- next thing will be that if you have a valid MOT it must also be taxed and insured!

Ditzy_Mitzy

Vistan said:

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

Thank you for your response; very helpful!

Ridiculous really that Tax is 'attached' to insurance in the way that you need both of them or none- next thing will be that if you have a valid MOT it must also be taxed and insured!

Thank you!     It always has been the case that a car needs an insurance policy in order to be taxed; the issue is that it used to be possible to buy insurance, tax the car and then exercise cancellation rights on the policy.  Also, if one was so inclined, one could pick up an old banger with a year or so on the tax disc and drive it around until the disc expired.  Owing to this there was a real problem with uninsured cars being used on the roads.  The new system is supposed to combat this, but I'm not sure how as it only appears to have resulted in the persistent non-insurers now running around without any tax either.  Continuous insurance is a good idea, in theory, but it doesn't really do anything in practice.  

[Deleted User]

Don't forget you can't have just 1 day tax - it's a minimum of 1 month, even if you cancel the day after you need it. The other point is if you don't have insurance, and it's stolen or damaged while off the road, what would you do? 
It might be easier to get rid of the car and just rent one for the few days you need it?