They can see when taxes are due on every single car. If this date passes and the car isn't declared SORN, then I don't see why they can't automatically issue a fine to the registered keeper. It seems straight forward to me. Not sure how you can evade.
Three times as many drivers evading tax since the tax disc was abolished
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They can see when taxes are due on every single car. If this date passes and the car isn't declared SORN, then I don't see why they can't automatically issue a fine to the registered keeper. It seems straight forward to me. Not sure how you can evade.
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That's what I was thinking.
I'm not sure how having a piece of paper in the window makes any difference to any of this. People were still moaning about paying VED and moaning about people not paying VED.
Have them near me all the time as well.
But with the paper disks it was a lot more obvious to any police walking/driving by (I think traffic wardens could report them too). If it was missing or the wrong colour, then something was dodgy. So there was a much higher risk of getting caught.
Now they would have to check every single number plate 1 by 1.
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Nah it'll be in a database. They could pull a spreadsheet of every untaxed car within minutes. Send them all fines. Do it again a month later. Driving ban for anyone who didn't sort it out.
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But there's the whole question of what VED achieves anyway. IMO it's easier to scrap it and put up fuel duty.
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Not entirely so.
My bike remains insured even though it's SORNed. I went to tax it but couldn't because the MoT has also expired.
However, I can legally ride to/from a place of either repair or an MoT testing appointment and thus can ride without tax... though admittedly only under those circumstances, but I understand my insurance still covers me even then.
Are there?
The article says:
- Some 1.8% of vehicles are untaxed in the UK in 2017 - up from 0.6% in 2013
- It means 755,000 cars, motorcycles and vans are being driven with no tax
Now, just because they're untaxed does NOT mean they're all being driven around. This was the stupid **** up Ken Livingstone made when he asserted that 60% of motorcyclists did not pay tax. They did... but only for the 6 months the bike was on the road. For the other 6, namely in the Winter time, the vast majority of those bikes were garaged away and appropriately SORNed. So at the time of checking, yes 60% of bikes technically had no tax...
So my first thought is that there's quite possibly been another Livingstone moment along similar lines. Subsequent statements suggest there's a lot of mis-measuring going on anyway. It says nothing really about people actually being caught driving without tax, either. That and the minor mistakes over the new non-transferable tax probably accounts for a lot of it, even though it's what, a 0.4% increase?
Not exactly ¾ of a million vehicles all without tax everywhere they go, as the article implies.
Realistically, the risk of getting caught hasn't changed; a visual check of a tax disc would still be followed up with an actual live check on the system and nobody goes around looking at tax discs deliberately to catch offenders. The perception of that risk has changed however, and people will feel like it's easier to get away with now that there's no visible indicator stuck to the windscreen.
Not always there is a guy by me that has an M3 that must be worth close to 20k that has been clamped twice in the past 18 months. What happened to the 1k fine they were threatening people with? as he obviously still tried to get away with it a second time so the fine cant be that much and stil worth the risk to him to try and avoid paying £500 tax.
Tried to get away with it, or is a forgetful and doesn't open his post. If they removed the clamp he probably paid the fine.
Can't just a computer just number crunch the reg against sorn?
You expect all the people who deliberately evade VED to have their car registered in their name to their address?
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I would as surely the seller would be sending off the v5 when these people buy the cars?
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Zero rate it for ICE vehicles and add it to fuel. 99% of evasion resolved.
But then people that drive a lot will cry.
As someone else earlier said, I wonder if the number of SORN vehicles has gone up.
Also looking at the daily mail chart, 50% of the untaxed vehicles have been untaxed for less than 2 months.
The new tax method means a car stops being taxed when a change in registered keeper occurs. Is this number just picking up transactions where people are buying VED a bit late. So nothing to do with a paper disc.
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Do away with a yearly tax and that requires. Makes sense to me.
In fact if you look at that chart again. If this was genuine long term evasion, then most would be for longer periods than just 2 months. I think this is just picking up transactions in any given period where the car is untaxed in the month or so after it occurs.
The lost income is then only a month or 2 rather than the annualised rate of VED. The £107m number probably takes that into account though and largely driven by the longer evaders who likely were also evading with paper discs.
The lost income is then only a month or 2 rather than the annualised rate of VED. The £107m number probably takes that into account though and largely driven by the longer evaders who likely were also evading with paper discs.