Road fund licence back door tax scam

[Peter911]

I've just renewed the tax on my 996.

It didn't come with the standard perforations as they are using up old bits of paper, to save money! They say please cut it out with scissors!

However, it did say the tax is no longer transferable with the car.

When you sell the car, you automatically get a refund of any full months in the unused portion.

The new owner has to tax it immediately.

Therefore if you sell your car on 1st month they get an extra months tax.


Bandits!

[TooMany2cvs]

Where have you been hiding for the last year?

[Peter911]

I did a search and nothing came up.

Maybe "road fund licence" is too posh for Pistonheads.

[V8forweekends]

Road Fund Licence is archaic, not posh. It ceased to exist in 1936.

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=1&a...

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=2&a...

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&a...

and about a million other threads.

Edited by V8forweekends on Friday 5th September 14:20

[Peter911]

Ok, thanks.

It does indeed look like it may have been discussed previously!

And RFL does seem to be no longer used!

[marshalla]

If you read the legislation, the tax ends when DVLA are notified of change of keeper, not at time of sale.

Even harder to keep track of.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Peter911 said:

It didn't come with the standard perforations as they are using up old bits of paper, to save money! They say please cut it out with scissors!

Why criticise this? They estimated the amount of paper they would need to take them up to sept 14, which is the last month of the tax disc. They've run out just a month short. So what. If they'd over ordered people would be screaming about a waste of public money. A 12th of the car owning population whose tax is due this month will need to cut out their own disc. It's hardly a disaster.

[paranoid airbag]

So, they expect to gain on average 1/24, or 4% (possibly less if people adapt to this change, possibly more if there's a natural tendency to sell early in the month), of VED on the cars that are sold.

A car apparently ( http://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobilit...) has 4 keepers over just under 8 years, so will be affected every two years. So 2% of total VED (not accounting for the fact cars with different VED levels might be sold more or less often). I must admit I thought a car lasted longer than 8 years on average, so this feels like an overestimate to me.

[TooMany2cvs]

paranoid airbag said:

So, they expect to gain on average 1/24, or 4% (possibly less if people adapt to this change, possibly more if there's a natural tendency to sell early in the month), of VED on the cars that are sold.

A car apparently ( http://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobilit...) has 4 keepers over just under 8 years, so will be affected every two years. So 2% of total VED (not accounting for the fact cars with different VED levels might be sold more or less often). I must admit I thought a car lasted longer than 8 years on average, so this feels like an overestimate to me.

I've seen a figure of ~30% of changes of keeper involving transfer of tax, since few traders have taxed stock currently. So make that 0.6% of total VED.

[CYMR0]

TooMany2cvs said:

paranoid airbag said:

So, they expect to gain on average 1/24, or 4% (possibly less if people adapt to this change, possibly more if there's a natural tendency to sell early in the month), of VED on the cars that are sold.

A car apparently ( http://www.racfoundation.org/motoring-faqs/mobilit...) has 4 keepers over just under 8 years, so will be affected every two years. So 2% of total VED (not accounting for the fact cars with different VED levels might be sold more or less often). I must admit I thought a car lasted longer than 8 years on average, so this feels like an overestimate to me.

I've seen a figure of ~30% of changes of keeper involving transfer of tax, since few traders have taxed stock currently. So make that 0.6% of total VED.

The average car is 7.6 years old. Depending on how you calculate that, if it's the mean age of cars then some could be 76 years old etc - but not many. So it's likely that cars, on average, last around 14 years, with an average of four keepers for one change every 3.5 years.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

As they are getting rid of the disc (which most people think is a good thing), it would be a real risk to buy a car having been told it was taxed until a certain time with no way of verifying it. So the obvious solution is just to draw a line under the whole thing and say no tax transfer, buy a car, buy tax, sell a car, get a refund.

It's not designed as a scam (although there will be a slight financial benefit), it's common sense.

[Rtig]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

As they are getting rid of the disc (which most people think is a good thing), it would be a real risk to buy a car having been told it was taxed until a certain time with no way of verifying it. So the obvious solution is just to draw a line under the whole thing and say no tax transfer, buy a car, buy tax, sell a car, get a refund.

It's not designed as a scam (although there will be a slight financial benefit), it's common sense.

Except, unless you have the common sense of a stone, it takes seconds to run the reg on the dvla website and find out when the tax runs out. It is a money making scheme through and through

[With these feet]

I agree, they will make 100's of millions on the sold/bought in the middle of a month scam. I read 1.75M used cars changed hands in the 1st 1/4 of the year...
Sure its always been like that but the old tax always was a bargaining chip, often left in by the old owner of the car sold to a stealer and then additional income on resale if left in the car.

They make it sound like theyre doing us a favour when in fact its cost cutting - post offices will lose income from it as well.

[TooMany2cvs]

Rtig said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

As they are getting rid of the disc (which most people think is a good thing), it would be a real risk to buy a car having been told it was taxed until a certain time with no way of verifying it. So the obvious solution is just to draw a line under the whole thing and say no tax transfer, buy a car, buy tax, sell a car, get a refund.

It's not designed as a scam (although there will be a slight financial benefit), it's common sense.

Except, unless you have the common sense of a stone, it takes seconds to run the reg on the dvla website and find out when the tax runs out. It is a money making scheme through and through

"OK, great, DVLA shows it as having 11mo tax left... Here's the money for the car, thanks for the keys, sign the V5C - Bye!"
<peers out window>
He's gone? Right. <clickety-click-click> Tax refund, thanks.
<drops V5C in post>

[TwigtheWonderkid]

Rtig said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

As they are getting rid of the disc (which most people think is a good thing), it would be a real risk to buy a car having been told it was taxed until a certain time with no way of verifying it. So the obvious solution is just to draw a line under the whole thing and say no tax transfer, buy a car, buy tax, sell a car, get a refund.

It's not designed as a scam (although there will be a slight financial benefit), it's common sense.

Except, unless you have the common sense of a stone, it takes seconds to run the reg on the dvla website and find out when the tax runs out. It is a money making scheme through and through

And what's to stop the last owner getting a refund on the tax after you'd done your check and driven off? The thing that prevented this before was possession of the disc. But the disc will be no more.

Small claims courts would be full of "he said I could keep the tax.....oh no I didn't, oh yes you did."

Now the disc is going, the new system is the only way forward.

[Pesty]

marshalla said:

If you read the legislation, the tax ends when DVLA are notified of change of keeper, not at time of sale.

Even harder to keep track of.

Right I'm fking confide as fk now.

So I go to buy a car private. Obviously I prepare the insureance first and if I buy then activate it.

So if I drive it home it is still taxed.

What about from an auction?

[Dinoboy]

Pesty said:

Right I'm fking confide as fk now.

So I go to buy a car private. Obviously I prepare the insureance first and if I buy then activate it.

So if I drive it home it is still taxed.

What about from an auction?

I was wondering about this the other day, I called to insure a new car, asked the guy if I'd be able to go and tax the car at the post office the next day, he said make sure you take the printed off insurance docs he'd email me as the system takes a day or 2 to update.
So does this mean you can't buy a car at auction at 1pm, call to insure it at 2pm and tax it at 2.30 to drive home?

[Dinoboy]

Pesty said:

Right I'm fking confide as fk now.

So I go to buy a car private. Obviously I prepare the insureance first and if I buy then activate it.

So if I drive it home it is still taxed.

What about from an auction?

I was wondering about this the other day, I called to insure a new car, asked the guy if I'd be able to go and tax the car at the post office the next day, he said make sure you take the printed off insurance docs he'd email me as the system takes a day or 2 to update.
So does this mean you can't buy a car at auction at 1pm, call to insure it at 2pm and tax it at 2.30 to drive home?

[Butter Face]

Dinoboy said:

Pesty said:

Right I'm fking confide as fk now.

So I go to buy a car private. Obviously I prepare the insureance first and if I buy then activate it.

So if I drive it home it is still taxed.

What about from an auction?

I was wondering about this the other day, I called to insure a new car, asked the guy if I'd be able to go and tax the car at the post office the next day, he said make sure you take the printed off insurance docs he'd email me as the system takes a day or 2 to update.
So does this mean you can't buy a car at auction at 1pm, call to insure it at 2pm and tax it at 2.30 to drive home?

You no longer need to produce insurance to tax a car.

You will be able to tax online/over the phone. You buy car, call, buy tax, drive car.

Simple.

[Gruber]

The flat earth society and the conspiracy theorists are really having a field day with this aren't they!?

It's simple, it's easy. It's not a con or a swindle. And it'll save the Government some money. All of which are fine by me.

Sitting here in hospital watching my 4 day old baby get some of the best medical attention the world has to offer, all for free, I do find myself amazed at the wailing and gnashing of teeth about this new RFL system. A few days extra money for the public purse here and a few perforations missing from a piece of paper there... If they use my extra couple of quid to go towards better roads or a new heart monitor, that's fine by me.