From 1 October 2014, the paper tax disc will no longer need
Discussion
Andyuk911 said:
As aside, traffic wardens often took pictures of tax discs, to prove the actual car parked.
All those 'cloned' reports will flood in Ha Ha
Isn't this a Car Cloners dream? Just pick a car with the same features, clone the plate, and you no longer have to rely on a dodgy photocopy of a photoshopped disc - the cloned car will be indistinguishable from the real one (unless its one of those cars with chassis number on the dashboard). The only way to get caught is to have an accident, or the clonee cancelling their insurance and doing the same.All those 'cloned' reports will flood in Ha Ha
ging84 said:
have you tax a car recently
the insurance requirement has already been removed
Certainly doesn't appear to be the case from my very recent experience - tax for or new A3 (well, disc, no tax for year 1) required insurance to be in place before it could be applied for by the dealership (hence most offering a free 1 week cover). Also taxing the A5 on-line the DVLA site verified but non-requirement for MoT (< 3 years old) and required insurance record in MID...the insurance requirement has already been removed
ging84 said:
have you tax a car recently
the insurance requirement has already been removed
You haven't taxed a car recently then.the insurance requirement has already been removed
You won't get road tax without the car being insured.
You may not have been asked to show your insurance certificate, but they check the car is insured before issuing the road tax.
IainT said:
Certainly doesn't appear to be the case from my very recent experience - tax for or new A3 (well, disc, no tax for year 1) required insurance to be in place before it could be applied for by the dealership (hence most offering a free 1 week cover). Also taxing the A5 on-line the DVLA site verified but non-requirement for MoT (< 3 years old) and required insurance record in MID...
There's no need to provide insurance when registering a new car or taxing a used one.http://www.trusteddealers.co.uk/blog/archives/dvla...
Riley Blue said:
George111 said:
Roo said:
George111 said:
1878 said:
Why would the French police care?
In EU you are supposed to have proof that you've paid vehicle tax in your country of origin . . . that used to be the tax disc. It will now have to be a print out from the web site you buy it from or a print of an e-mail.George111 said:
Riley Blue said:
George111 said:
Roo said:
George111 said:
1878 said:
Why would the French police care?
In EU you are supposed to have proof that you've paid vehicle tax in your country of origin . . . that used to be the tax disc. It will now have to be a print out from the web site you buy it from or a print of an e-mail.Riley Blue said:
George111 said:
Riley Blue said:
George111 said:
Roo said:
George111 said:
1878 said:
Why would the French police care?
In EU you are supposed to have proof that you've paid vehicle tax in your country of origin . . . that used to be the tax disc. It will now have to be a print out from the web site you buy it from or a print of an e-mail.
George111 said:
If you get stopped for speeding you get the full check-up, every piece of paper and document double checked in case they can get you for something else . . . if you crash into one of their nationals even though it may not be your fault they are going to go Paxman over you and look for anything they can. Just my experience . . . if you've not experienced it then do as you please . . .
But VED is a tax. French plod, for example, are very interested that you have yellow tabard, insurance, spare lights, sometimes check for MOT. But VED is not their domain?SV8Predator said:
ging84 said:
have you tax a car recently
the insurance requirement has already been removed
You haven't taxed a car recently then.the insurance requirement has already been removed
You won't get road tax without the car being insured.
You may not have been asked to show your insurance certificate, but they check the car is insured before issuing the road tax.
Motorists will no longer need motor insurance policies to be checked when getting their vehicle tax.
As car dealers this will impact on us quite heavily. Odd that we haven't been contacted by DVLA - the first I heard of it was on this website 2 days ago !!
So I did the decent thing and called DVLA, it turns out they haven't finalised the fine details yet - worrying. I've contacted Oliver Morley chief executive of DVLA for a few answers. I've also contacted Dominic Grieve our local MP.
As I see things there are a few issues.
Peoople are going to lose incomplete months so DVLA will get 13 months or more revenue from some cars.
We buy all our stock from private owners and the cars come taxed. We do have a set of trade plates for odd occasions when a car isn't taxed but for test drives, delivering a car to a customer or ferrying cars around to get work done they run on their tax disc. We will now have to buy lots of trade plates to cover a worst case scenario, 2 cars being ferried around for work, 2 test drives, a delivery and so on. I'm sure the DVLA site said there would be a zero cost impact to consumers.
What happens about cherished plates? Currently car dealers have to find ways to work around the DVLA rules in order to take a customers plate off for them. People never do this in advance, they want to role up sell their car and have us do the legwork to put it on retention for them. I can see a few plates getting lost.
What happens if we need to lend a customer a car. Currently if a stock car is taxed this is easy.
The rather clueless individual at DVLA said something about "taking over the direct debit payments" of the person from whom you purchase the car off when asked about the need to buy additional trade plates. Are they suggesting we pay the monthly tax on 30 cars at an average of £3-400 per year? I bloody well hope not!
There's no easy way of saying this but DVLA are not famous for their efficiency or ability to sort out their feck ups. I would wager a good proportion of our national deficit that at some point the system will fail. Yesterday for instance the on line tax portal wasn't available. What do our customers do then? Camp out in our yard until such time as the system sorts it's self out and they can legally drive their new car home?
There is a chance that people will expect car dealers to stump up the cost of 6 months tax with every car sold. We can't afford to do this and we are already under huge pressure with the 20% gross tax on margins and wage bills before we even start to turn a penny in profit. Could this be the nail in the coffin? In theory the person gets a refund on their remaining tax of the old car and just starts paying tax on the new one but I'm not sure people will grasp this.
It will be harder to spot untaxed cars.
It will be much easier to forget to tax your car and we all know how the untaxed car crusher works.
What happens to all these cars in limbo sitting in car dealer stock? Whilst the government are claiming a few £ million saving not having to send out tax discs the bicycle riding genius who came up with the scheme has forgotten to factor in the loss of revenue from cars which would have previously taxed sitting on a forecourt but which now are untaxed. We sometimes have cars in stock for several months and at £500 per year that's going to add up pretty quickly. Even when you sell something reasonably quickly the whole process takes quite a while. Take it into stock, wait for workshop space to get mechanical and bodywork done, prep car, advertise, sell, hold whilst customer arranges things / goes on holiday / builds garage / breaks news to wife husband boy/girlfriend and so on.
As has already been mentioned the cloning brigade have just seen their job made a little easier.
The answer is we don't know the answer because DVLA don't know the answer. I see grey clouds on the horizon.....
Henry
So I did the decent thing and called DVLA, it turns out they haven't finalised the fine details yet - worrying. I've contacted Oliver Morley chief executive of DVLA for a few answers. I've also contacted Dominic Grieve our local MP.
As I see things there are a few issues.
Peoople are going to lose incomplete months so DVLA will get 13 months or more revenue from some cars.
We buy all our stock from private owners and the cars come taxed. We do have a set of trade plates for odd occasions when a car isn't taxed but for test drives, delivering a car to a customer or ferrying cars around to get work done they run on their tax disc. We will now have to buy lots of trade plates to cover a worst case scenario, 2 cars being ferried around for work, 2 test drives, a delivery and so on. I'm sure the DVLA site said there would be a zero cost impact to consumers.
What happens about cherished plates? Currently car dealers have to find ways to work around the DVLA rules in order to take a customers plate off for them. People never do this in advance, they want to role up sell their car and have us do the legwork to put it on retention for them. I can see a few plates getting lost.
What happens if we need to lend a customer a car. Currently if a stock car is taxed this is easy.
The rather clueless individual at DVLA said something about "taking over the direct debit payments" of the person from whom you purchase the car off when asked about the need to buy additional trade plates. Are they suggesting we pay the monthly tax on 30 cars at an average of £3-400 per year? I bloody well hope not!
There's no easy way of saying this but DVLA are not famous for their efficiency or ability to sort out their feck ups. I would wager a good proportion of our national deficit that at some point the system will fail. Yesterday for instance the on line tax portal wasn't available. What do our customers do then? Camp out in our yard until such time as the system sorts it's self out and they can legally drive their new car home?
There is a chance that people will expect car dealers to stump up the cost of 6 months tax with every car sold. We can't afford to do this and we are already under huge pressure with the 20% gross tax on margins and wage bills before we even start to turn a penny in profit. Could this be the nail in the coffin? In theory the person gets a refund on their remaining tax of the old car and just starts paying tax on the new one but I'm not sure people will grasp this.
It will be harder to spot untaxed cars.
It will be much easier to forget to tax your car and we all know how the untaxed car crusher works.
What happens to all these cars in limbo sitting in car dealer stock? Whilst the government are claiming a few £ million saving not having to send out tax discs the bicycle riding genius who came up with the scheme has forgotten to factor in the loss of revenue from cars which would have previously taxed sitting on a forecourt but which now are untaxed. We sometimes have cars in stock for several months and at £500 per year that's going to add up pretty quickly. Even when you sell something reasonably quickly the whole process takes quite a while. Take it into stock, wait for workshop space to get mechanical and bodywork done, prep car, advertise, sell, hold whilst customer arranges things / goes on holiday / builds garage / breaks news to wife husband boy/girlfriend and so on.
As has already been mentioned the cloning brigade have just seen their job made a little easier.
The answer is we don't know the answer because DVLA don't know the answer. I see grey clouds on the horizon.....
Henry
I presume the original reason for the tax being "monthly" was to keep admin levels / paperwork logistics manageable (sending each months' batches of new discs to the post offices etc).
Really once they have moved to the paperless/discless system the requirement for car tax to be in monthly divisions ought to go away ... there should be no reason why it can't move to week by week or even day by day for the periods for which you can tax a car. Should be no different to insurance, the default period that most people buy is a year, but there are ways to insure just for a week or a day if you want/need, albeit at a higher cost-per-day than an annual policy. And not just that, there should be no reason the months/weeks/days of tax can't start on a particular nominated day, again just like you can buy your insurance to start on a particular day. I can't think of any reason why a paperless system can only start on the 1st of a month and end on a 28/30/31.
Even public transport travelcards have allowances for people to buy the period that suits them, in London anyway you effectively get a discount roughly equivalent to one division less than you are buying, i.e. buy a weekly travelcard you effectively pay for about 4 days worth (working week), buy a month your price is about 3 weeks worth, buy a year your price is somewhere around 10/11 months worth. Don't see why car tax can't be similar. And, you can start your travelcard whatever day you rock up to buy it. With London travelcards you can also "cash in" and get a refund on unused portions, less a reasonable admin fee, so whether it is worth applying for the refund depends how close to the end of the period you bought you are.
I would like to hear someone from the DVLA explain why it can't move to a similar "cost per day / start any day" model as insurance and travel cards and countless other things use, even better with simple discounts for the longer period you buy built in to reflect the lesser amount of processing involved in longer periods bought. For them to stick to the rigid month by month pricing, and the "12 months for the price of 13+" that will cause in a lot of cases, means they have to be one of greedy, incompetent, or grossly unprepared. Have to be.
Really once they have moved to the paperless/discless system the requirement for car tax to be in monthly divisions ought to go away ... there should be no reason why it can't move to week by week or even day by day for the periods for which you can tax a car. Should be no different to insurance, the default period that most people buy is a year, but there are ways to insure just for a week or a day if you want/need, albeit at a higher cost-per-day than an annual policy. And not just that, there should be no reason the months/weeks/days of tax can't start on a particular nominated day, again just like you can buy your insurance to start on a particular day. I can't think of any reason why a paperless system can only start on the 1st of a month and end on a 28/30/31.
Even public transport travelcards have allowances for people to buy the period that suits them, in London anyway you effectively get a discount roughly equivalent to one division less than you are buying, i.e. buy a weekly travelcard you effectively pay for about 4 days worth (working week), buy a month your price is about 3 weeks worth, buy a year your price is somewhere around 10/11 months worth. Don't see why car tax can't be similar. And, you can start your travelcard whatever day you rock up to buy it. With London travelcards you can also "cash in" and get a refund on unused portions, less a reasonable admin fee, so whether it is worth applying for the refund depends how close to the end of the period you bought you are.
I would like to hear someone from the DVLA explain why it can't move to a similar "cost per day / start any day" model as insurance and travel cards and countless other things use, even better with simple discounts for the longer period you buy built in to reflect the lesser amount of processing involved in longer periods bought. For them to stick to the rigid month by month pricing, and the "12 months for the price of 13+" that will cause in a lot of cases, means they have to be one of greedy, incompetent, or grossly unprepared. Have to be.
There is another thing which needs to be sorted out and that's what happens to the tax remaining on our stock cars come October. When we buy a car in we consider remaining tax. If it's got the thick end of £500 remaining we pay more for the car knowing we can ask a bit more at the other end either directly because of the tax or benefit from an inducement to purchase. If that tax goes back to the original person we bought the car from then we have been robbed. We are currently holding over £2,000 in complete unexpired months of road tax.
Henry
Henry
kev1974 said:
I presume the original reason for the tax being "monthly" was to keep admin levels / paperwork logistics manageable (sending each months' batches of new discs to the post offices etc).
Really once they have moved to the paperless/discless system the requirement for car tax to be in monthly divisions ought to go away ...
Exactly. Works perfectly well for MOTs without any problem. OTOH I don't see anywhere where it says that monthly periods will be maintained so my optimistic side says maybe there will be a real benefit for consumers Really once they have moved to the paperless/discless system the requirement for car tax to be in monthly divisions ought to go away ...
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