Talk Morgan Forums Morgan Sports Cars Classic Morgans (pre-CX) tax disc new system

Just had letter from dvla saying I've not taxed my Mog since I bought it last Oct , it has a tax disc saying Oct 2015 on it , hadn't any idea that the seller gets a refund on the tax disc so the new owner has to pay tax immediately - wonder why its taken dvla all this time to send this letter ? Would seem a better system to allow new owner to take on the remainder of the tax and save sending out refunds in post ?

I suppose you no longer have to return the physical taxdisc to claim the refund. From now on there won't be any paper to return anyway. You're lucky they haven't imposed a fine for no road fund licence or no SORN. IMHO the new system is not a great idea.

Sellers - DVLA will supply an automatic refund upon receipt of your V5C(1) onto the system.

Buyers - it's now YOUR responsibility to tax the vehicle from the date of purchase (or SORN it) either on-line or by post. There is a 14 day window of allowance here, to allow for return of the new V5C to you as you need the twelve digit reference number of the front.

DVLA will make money because you can only tax it from the start of a month, but will refund you only full months. So buy on the 25th & you lose on 25 days tax refund but the buyer also loses as you have to tax it on that date too. Unless, you don't get pinged on a camera from DVLA until after the start of the next month..

So why did it take 5 months to send me a letter to inform me of taxing the Mog , even then they got the figure wrong !

In future I plan to change cars at the end of a month. Selling the old car on last day, collecting new on following 1st of month.
Just another way to fleece the poor motorist... I could have a night in a Premiere Inn and still have change with many cars...

+1

Bear in mind, DVLC only know of the sale when they receive and process the V5c. So although you are obliged to pay on purchase, it's not an immediate worry.

Agree entirely the system is deliberately set up to fleece us !

I think the daft thing is that now they have changed from having the identifiable 'tax paid' disc, they have retained the idea of monthly increments, with an overlap on the selling of the car such that both buyer and seller pay for the same month's tax.

Why isn't it simply done on a daily basis -the seller refunded from the day of sale and the buyer paying from the day of sale?

There are anomalies that have to be built into the system; the tax is paid at an annual rate and months are all different lengths. Months are really nothing to do with it, just introduced to catch us out.

The motorist is taxed whenever they can and they make no attempt to even do it fairly.

What happened to 'the road fund'.

Grump, grump ....

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1996 +4 4 seater (taxed)

Scrap the car tax system and collect the revenue through fuel duty.

The RAC Foundation, in 2012, calculated 14p a litre would do it.

Fuel for Thought

With the recent fall in fuel prices this wouldn't even return prices to where they were at the peak.

We have 3 cars, total car tax is almost £1000 a year.
That would be 7142 litres at 14p a litre.

We drive about 17,000 miles in total
Average mpg across the 3 is roughly 32mpg.
So we buy about 2500 litres.
We would "save" about £600