Selling car - new road tax thievery rules??

[dapearson]

Stupid, overly complicated system.

Just stick it onto the price of fuel.

Having it per car is just a right pain for all involved.

[robinessex]

Wouldn't have all this problem(s) if the 'tax' on cars was scrubbed, and a bit more tagged onto fuel.

[dapearson]

There's an echo in here...

[aww999]

TooMany2cvs said:

confused_buyer said:

The whole road tax system is a mess anyway.

When they introduced the low tax bands, they didn't expect manufacturers to meet those CO2 levels or people to buy them.

Everyday, several £280+ tax cars get scrapped and several £0-£30 to tax cars go on the road to replace them. In 2-3 years time the revenues from road tax will fall off a cliff to the point it will cost more to run than it raises.

The question is when/if a government is going to have the courage to ramp up costs for the low emissions cars which will royally annoy everyone who bought them because of cheap road tax.

Yep, you're bob-on.
There's a real issue here. Everybody knows the official CO2/economy system has been thoroughly gamed, and the figures arising from it are totally unrepeatable in real life. Yet cars older than a few years old are significantly higher banded. So do they break the CO2-based tax somehow, or do they hit older cars (especially early CO2 taxed) stuff much harder than they intended?

One thing's for sure, when even stuff like Cayennes and Panameras is zero-cost VED, let alone £30 VED on E-classes and 5-series, the total tax income has clearly dropped like a stone. And, when there's a huge budget deficit, you can be it's not going to get ignored for long.

I mentioned this about five years ago. The government requires £Xm per year from motorists to prop up its finances. You can rush to buy a crappy 1.0L tin box on wheels to save a few quid at the expense of your motoring happiness, but as soon as everyone else does it the tax/duty/road-charging rates for that 1.0L tin box will be whacked right up so you are paying the same as you ever were. The government still gets its £Xm per year, but you are in a crappier car along with everyone else. Result!

[JB!]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

So you want to go the opposite route. Instead of making it compulsory to cash in tax at point of sale, you'd make it compulsory to lose the tax at point of sale!! If they'd done that, we'd have threads saying how DVLA were fiddling people out of their money.

What if the buyer doesn't want the tax, as he may be exporting the vehicle, or not going to be using it for a few months? Or a trader who doesn't want to pay out for tax on a car that may sit in stock for a long time.

Sorry, compulsory transfer of tax is a rubbish idea.

No its not.

Its how it should work. If the vehicle is sold to trade, you use the trade slip of the log book, and can cash the tax in, if the vehicle is exported, you use the export part of the log book, and can cash tax in. These bits of the log book already exist.

Going private-private, the tax stays valid.

Not rocket science.

[xRIEx]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

So you want to go the opposite route. Instead of making it compulsory to cash in tax at point of sale, you'd make it compulsory to lose the tax at point of sale!! If they'd done that, we'd have threads saying how DVLA were fiddling people out of their money.

What if the buyer doesn't want the tax, as he may be exporting the vehicle, or not going to be using it for a few months? Or a trader who doesn't want to pay out for tax on a car that may sit in stock for a long time.

Sorry, compulsory transfer of tax is a rubbish idea.

No, because the value of the tax would be accounted for in the sale price; the issue is, and always has been, the duplicated payments for the period during which a car is bought and sold.

A 'buyer exporting vehicle' scenario is a tiny proportion of all vehicle transactions so would result in much less financial loss all round (except for the Treasury). In any case, under the new rules, an exporting buyer would have to tax the vehicle and then claim back the remainder when informing the DVSA of the export, which leaves them in the exact same financial position as the suggestion above. The only workaround would be if its wheels didn't touch tarmac before leaving the UK - certainly possible, but an even smaller proportion of overall sales.

[robinessex]

And another point. The Govenment can/have got rid of the tax disc because THEY believe they have enough ANPR cameras all over the place spying on us to know who and where we are. Unless you live in the middle of Dartmoor, or similar I guess. And as for the more dishonest section of the population, cloning a car now has a greater attraction, and is more 'worthwhile' if you've no intention of paying for anything.

[Devil2575]

I like the new system.

In the past I would drive 150 miles to view a car at a dealer. However as it was Saturday afternoon and even though I don't want any of the preps they do I couldn't drive it away as it wasn't taxed. So I then had to go to the time and expense of going back on another day to collect it.

Now, I can organise the tax online using my smart phone and drive the car away the same day.

Works for me.

[Devil2575]

robinessex said:

And another point. The Govenment can/have got rid of the tax disc because THEY believe they have enough ANPR cameras all over the place spying on us to know who and where we are.

No, they know that they have a better chance of spotting us with ANPR than they ever did by checking to see if the bit of paper in the windscreen is present.

ANPR has made it harder to get away with it.

[zedstar]

Seems to be a very simple change that the govt could make is to leave any 'unrefundable' tax with the car, so when the car is sold and new buyer goes to tax online they get the unrefunded amount of time left on. i.e. buy car on October 15th, buyer cancels his tax and gets refund of Nov onwards, new buyer taxes and his payable period starts Nov 1st. They could do this also for new cars under a year old, so the first year rate thats unrefundable stays with the car.

Theres absolutely nothing to stop the govt from doing this, other than the fact that it would be more fair and not as financially beneficial for them.

[andy-xr]

Buying a car is now easier, vehicle checker tells you how much tax is left on the car, which the seller will automatically get a credit for, so that's a starting point for a discount in my eyes

11 months T+T? OK, that's £260 discount I'm after thanks

[JamesD1]

not meaning to derail the thread.

will ask here rather than starting a new one. if i buy a car today will the new tax scheme affect me? car got tax til end of november, just want to double check i'll be ok (im under the impression im fine)

[xRIEx]

andy-xr said:

Buying a car is now easier, vehicle checker tells you how much tax is left on the car, which the seller will automatically get a credit for, so that's a starting point for a discount in my eyes

Why a discount? It's a level playing field, every car is subject to the same rules; it's not like you can go and buy x vehicle down the road because that one includes tax and this one doesn't, none of them do.

[TwigtheWonderkid]

andy-xr said:

Buying a car is now easier, vehicle checker tells you how much tax is left on the car, which the seller will automatically get a credit for, so that's a starting point for a discount in my eyes

11 months T+T? OK, that's £260 discount I'm after thanks

Exactly. In the past, selling a oldish high co2 vehicle that had a fair amount of tax on it, it was a nightmare. You advertised the car and built in say £300 for the remaining tax, and you got no takers. You advertised just the car without building in the tax value and the new buyer offered the price but wanted tax thrown in.

The new system does away with all that.

[andy-xr]

xRIEx said:

Why a discount? It's a level playing field, every car is subject to the same rules; it's not like you can go and buy x vehicle down the road because that one includes tax and this one doesn't, none of them do.

But previously as a seller you could either cash the old tax back in, or leave it and use it as a sales bargaining tool. Now you cant.

So cars that are advertised as 11 months tax and test (and there will be for a while yet) are open to being negotiated on a bit more because of the auto refund

[TwigtheWonderkid]

JB! said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

So you want to go the opposite route. Instead of making it compulsory to cash in tax at point of sale, you'd make it compulsory to lose the tax at point of sale!! If they'd done that, we'd have threads saying how DVLA were fiddling people out of their money.

What if the buyer doesn't want the tax, as he may be exporting the vehicle, or not going to be using it for a few months? Or a trader who doesn't want to pay out for tax on a car that may sit in stock for a long time.

Sorry, compulsory transfer of tax is a rubbish idea.

No its not.

Its how it should work. If the vehicle is sold to trade, you use the trade slip of the log book, and can cash the tax in, if the vehicle is exported, you use the export part of the log book, and can cash tax in. These bits of the log book already exist.

Going private-private, the tax stays valid.

Not rocket science.

But they wanted to bring in monthly direct debit, which is surely a great idea. People have been calling for that for ages. How would that work? The previous owner would have to keep paying a monthly charge for a car he'd sold! What if the d.d. payments went down?

[xRIEx]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

But they wanted to bring in monthly direct debit, which is surely a great idea. People have been calling for that for ages. How would that work? The previous owner would have to keep paying a monthly charge for a car he'd sold! What if the d.d. payments went down?

Again, no - the previous owner could cancel the direct debit instruction with his bank. New owner starts paying from next tax period - no duplication.

I'm making an assumption here that the monthly payments will be collected in advance of the taxed period, rather than in arrears.

[budfox]

One of the reasons I got rid of my Z4 was the resentment at paying £285/year to tax it. For the life of me I can't see why the VED can't be included in the price of fuel.

[mister_ee]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

Explain how that would work with no disc. You buy a car and agree that the tax will stay in place. Then you get pulled for not having tax. The previous owner denies agreeing to hand over the balance of the tax and says it was agreed he'd cash it in.

Then what?

How difficult would it be to have a tick box on the V5 that says "tax cashed in Y/N" that way the previous owner would get the money back (or not) and the new owner would a) know and b) be able to prove the tax status

[shakotan]

TwigtheWonderkid said:

shakotan said:

TwigtheWonderkid said:

ferrariF50lover said:

This is, really, the stty end of the stick for the motorist (for the millionth time). The old system of having a little disc was certainly out of date, since nothing needs to be made of paper any more. However, this daft system of not being able to transfer tax is silly. The tax relates to the car, not the owner, so a change of ownership without any change to the car needn't affect the tax. The decision that it should was made by Government and, as we well know, any decision made by Government is made to benefit Government. That does, eventually and in a vastly reduced way, benefit you and I, but not to the same extent that the extra money in my pocket would.

Simon.

Explain how that would work with no disc. You buy a car and agree that the tax will stay in place. Then you get pulled for not having tax. The previous owner denies agreeing to hand over the balance of the tax and says it was agreed he'd cash it in.

Then what?

Simple, you don't get the option of cashing tax in early, unless it is due to the vehicle being scrapped or put onto SORN.

So you want to go the opposite route. Instead of making it compulsory to cash in tax at point of sale, you'd make it compulsory to lose the tax at point of sale!! If they'd done that, we'd have threads saying how DVLA were fiddling people out of their money.

What if the buyer doesn't want the tax, as he may be exporting the vehicle, or not going to be using it for a few months? Or a trader who doesn't want to pay out for tax on a car that may sit in stock for a long time.

Sorry, compulsory transfer of tax is a rubbish idea.

I've never EVER sold a car and retained/cashed in the tax. I utterly see no point in it.

The examples you give, the new owner can cash in the tax if it is their preference.