New Tax laws and buying/selling cars

[cameronfurnival]

This useful information has been passed on by David Embrey of the Triumph Sport Six Club.

The DVLA are restructuring the way we tax our vehicles. it is also bringing in new rules regarding selling and
buying vehicles. Even if they are tax exempt.
British car owners are being urged to make sure they are aware of new road tax laws which take effect from
October this year. One of the new rules prohibits sellers from passing on the outstanding period of road tax
with the sale of a car.
The DVLA has been advising UK residents for the last couple of years that paper tax discs, which have been
in use since 1921, will become obsolete for the last couple of years, with their total removal to apply from 1
October 2014. From that date, drivers can choose to manage their road tax online, through the Post Office or
with Direct Debit payments. Enforcement will be via DVLA and police cameras with number plate recognition
technology, which can check automatically whether a vehicle is currently taxed on SORN, rather than
checking that paper tax discs are affixed to windscreens.
The DVLA believes the new system will not only make it more difficult for drivers to get away with driving
untaxed vehicles but also cut down on administration costs to an estimated £10 million annually. The DVLA
produced 42.2 million paper tax discs, with a total weight over 72 tonnes - more than a Challenger 2 tank.
Car owners must also be vigilant in ensuring that the DVLA is informed of any change of car ownerships, and
any unused tax cannot be transferred with the vehicle. Drivers, instead, will need to claim a refund for the
remaining taxation period. Sellers who fail to notify the DVLA that their vehicle has been sold risk a fine of
£1,000, in addition to being on the end of any speeding or parking offences incurred by the new owner,
resulting in further fines and possible licence penalty points.
The DVLA is reminding car owners that it is the seller's responsibility to return the V5C registration document
complete with details of the sale, rather than relying on the new owner to do so, and owners who scrap their
vehicles must be in receipt of a Certificate of Destruction, as given by an authorised facility. Until the
documents are sent off, drivers are likely to be held liable for any transgressions committed by the car's new
owner.
Motoring organisations, however, are concerned that drivers will unwittingly break the law if they do not
know or understand the new rules. The DVLA has produced a short film called 'Goodbye to the tax disc' to
help car owners understand the new scheme.

[Gareth]

Re: New Tax laws and buying/selling cars

And I bet I don't get back the full amount left over if I sell my car!!!

[stevejgreen]

Re: New Tax laws and buying/selling cars

I understood that part of the changes was to allow road tax to be paid via direct debit, on a monthly basis. That sounds like a good idea to me as some might struggle to pay the full amount in one go.
Personally I like the Spanish system. You get a tax demand once a year, have two months to pay it. Their MOT is government run, so no unscrupulous mechanics, and you get a dated MOT sticker much like a tax disk, so there is no excuse for not getting it done.
finally, my road tax equivalent was €14. With the current exchange rate, that's peanuts, and fuel is cheaper too!

[b_caswell]

Re: New Tax laws and buying/selling cars

Well I wouldn't class the DVLA film as informative even if you can understand the accent!! Unless they change the rule on surrendering your road fund licence. When you sell a car half way through a month you loose the remainder of that month from the refund and the new owner has to pay for road tax from the beginning of that current month. So the DVLA get the money twice over. The new owner will have to tax the car before they even drive the car home or it could be a £1000 fine.

[Dane_Rescueman]

Re: New Tax laws and buying/selling cars

Although I don't expect our kit cars to be too affected by the new system, there is ample opportunity now to clone mainstream models. All the unscrupulous need to do is to find an identical coloured vehicle to their own and the have hookey plates made up. The DVLA stated that ANPR can be fooled by this. I wonder what the autonomous ANPR video data capture systems would make of the same car and number in two different places? I expect the crooks are already waiting for October!