DVLA - Road Tax - Feeling Swindled

Portiacat26

Today is 22nd September. I picked up a (new to me) vehicle. The dealer had taxed it for me earlier in the day, however, the start date for road tax is 1st September. DVLA don't have systems set up to deal with daily entries. I think this is ludicrous in this day and age when computers should be able to facilitate this easily.  I feel  fed up and short changed that the DVLA don't use the actual start date so that I get a full years worth of road tax for my money.

If we are to rule out unfairness, shouldn't this start from the very top?! If the Government don't play fair and set an example, how on earth can we effect change? 

400ixl

This is the way it has always been, you are right, they could pro-rata the monthly rate to the number of days, but they choose not to.

You could raise it with your MP, or no doubt find a petition on the parliament site to vote on, but other than that, there is not much an individual can do.

Certainly not worth getting fed up about.

Brie

Not quite right that it's always been this way - as I understand it.  I believe the "tax disc" used to be sold with the car and you would renew it from the next month.  DVLA got rid of that when they went completely online so I suspect it was a conscious decision to get a few ££ out of us whenever we bought or sold a car.

GrumpyDil

Brie said:

Not quite right that it's always been this way - as I understand it.  I believe the "tax disc" used to be sold with the car and you would renew it from the next month.  DVLA got rid of that when they went completely online so I suspect it was a conscious decision to get a few ££ out of us whenever we bought or sold a car.

 Not quite. Existing car tax would be left to run to it's existing expiry upon a change of keeper unless a request was made to cancel it, at which point any whole months would be refunded. The difference now is that the change of keeper process automatically cancels it. 

mjm3346

GrumpyDil said:

Brie said:

Not quite right that it's always been this way - as I understand it.  I believe the "tax disc" used to be sold with the car and you would renew it from the next month.  DVLA got rid of that when they went completely online so I suspect it was a conscious decision to get a few ££ out of us whenever we bought or sold a car.

 Not quite. Existing car tax would be left to run to it's existing expiry upon a change of keeper unless a request was made to cancel it, at which point any whole months would be refunded. The difference now is that the change of keeper process automatically cancels it. 

Existing car tax is no longer "sold" with a vehicle (not my bold)

Can I transfer tax to a used car that I've bought? Road tax is not transferable between owners of a car even if you're family members since the new rules came into force in 2014 that put an end to issuing of tax discs and allowed sellers to get a full refund on the sold car's remaining months' tax

rubble2

On a related subject, my wife has been paying her VED by monthly direct debit for the past year. The last payment was taken out on 1st September (so next payment would have been due 1st October) so she cancelled her DD. She now wants to pay annually, so having paid the last of this year's DD she went on to the DVLA website to pay next years tax.

Fortunately, we noticed that if she had proceeded with the annual payment the tax would have run from 1st September so effectively paying for September twice. She made a note not to pay the new premium until 1st October.

However, a day or so later she received a text from DVLA saying 'We note that you have cancelled your Direct Debit, it is illegal to drive your car untaxed - you must make a payment before you can legally drive your car' !

Doing on to the dvla website and looking up the tax status for her car it clearly shows that it is taxed until 1st October. Very misleading.

elsien

Government playing fair and setting an example?

Been quite a long time since that happened.