Luxury Car Tax

Mercdriver

iainscomputer said:

AdrianC said:

Mercdriver said:

uknick said:

AdrianC said:

uknick said:

I'm not sure I'm any the wiser.  Two answers say I pay the full 12 month's £325 luxury tax from August 2023 thus paying past April 2024 and one says I should only pay to April 2024 as it's done on  a monthly basis.

Logically, it should be monthly and either I only pay 9 months up front or I get a 3 month refund in April 2024.  But, when did logic have anything to do with DVLA?

It's very simple...

Any tax you buy before the car is 5yo has the premium added to it.
If you SORN the car, you get that premium back pro-rata, too.

So you tax the car from August until July, paying the base + premium.
You can then either SORN it in late April and retax it again from the start of May paying just the base, or you can shrug and decide that reclaiming three month's-worth of the premium (3/12 x £325 = £81.25) isn't worth that minor hassle.

Thanks.  That is what people are doing to reclaim the tax on pure electric cars since the changes but I wasn't sure if it was applicable in my case.

I'm not sure if it is simple in practice though; simple for me would be for DVLA to only charge 9 months to April 2024.  But, it is what it is.

If they allowed what you are suggesting then they would be selling RFL by the month, which they do not do.  They sell by 6 or 12 months and give you the opportunity to pay the 12 months in instalments with an admin charge on top.  That's why they will not do 9 months at luxury rate and then 3 by normal.

And, if they started on that, people would moan they can't tax daily.

You'd see people tax their car in the morning, Sorn it in the evening, have a day off, tax it again... Then moan it couldn't be hourly.

Now that the car tax is computerised there is no reason why your car tax couldn’t be taxed daily, we have MOT & insurance that runs from any date in the month. It would be very easy to do the refunds on a daily cost especially when the car status has been changed online.
Lots of drivers don’t really like the way VED is split into calendar months & the way tax is purchased twice for the same month when a car is sold.

But then HM Government wouldn't gain extra revenue from those paying multiples of 6 months rather than a full 12 months at a time.  You also overestimate the ability of government to cut through red tape.  I don't see this setup changing soon, if ever.

sweetsand

Slight OT but many people are not aware that when they buy a used car that falls into the OP's group that are lumbered with these additional costs.

TheAuditor

If what some are saying is true, then DVLA or DVSA are ripping people off MASSIVELY.
There is no way I could afford to disregard claiming back 3 months tax or more, DVLA is a 'fortress' that NEEDS a massive reorganisation and auditing. HMRC have it claws into everything. Customs and excise is a hundreds of years old system that need to be, looked into.

uknick

I'd forgotten I'd started this thread.

The answer to my question was DVLA automatically charged for the 9 months from renewal in August to expiration of the luxury car tax in April.