EV vehicle tax change – is it from first registered, or first registered in the UK?

mdr86

I'm about to buy a used Nissan Leaf. It's an Irish import – I've got decent quotes for insurance, and the only oddity with the car is that the mileometer is actually in km (but the HUD shows mph), so largely not a concern. Except – EV vehicle tax is increasing from April, and it'll be £20/yr if registered 31 Mar 2017 or before, and £195/yr if registered after; and this vehicle was originally registered in Ireland in 2014, and first registered in the UK in 2018. Which date counts? An extra £175/yr over the remaining lifetime of the vehicle takes the price from quite a good deal to not a very good deal at all!

sheslookinhot

£15 month between a good deal and not a good deal. Great living on the margins.

Mildly_Miffed

Used imports are on the tax regime they'd have had if they were new here, so it should be £20.

mdr86

Mildly_Miffed said:

Used imports are on the tax regime they'd have had if they were new here, so it should be £20.

Thanks! Do you have a source for that? I've struggled to find any information at all about imports and VED online. (I even tried calling DVLA, and they wouldn't give an answer, saying "the budget hasn't been decided yet" 🤦)

Edit: found a source! https://insidedvla.blog.gov.uk/2017/03/31/new-vehicle-tax-rules-how-imported-vehicles-are-affected/

My mistake when searching before was searching specifically about EVs, when that was a red herring – the bit of information I needed was generically about imports, not EV-specific.

Mildly_Miffed

mdr86 said:

Mildly_Miffed said:

Used imports are on the tax regime they'd have had if they were new here, so it should be £20.

Thanks! Do you have a source for that?

It's just the way it always works...

If you imported a 1982 car in 2018, it'd be £0 historic VED.
If you imported a 1992 car in 2018, it'd be engine-size split VED.
If you imported a 2014 petrol car in 2018, with CoC for official CO2 figure, it'd be CO2 banded VED not flat rate.

I see no reason at all why a 2014 car would suddenly leap onto the post-2017 flat instead of the 2001-2017 banding.