Is this any different to how the system works now ? For the last decade any car that I or my wife have sold has not included the tax disc. This ensures that no trader can sell it on without customer details in full, and that the new keeper has to register it to get a tax disc.

Selling a car with a tax disc (especially to a private buyer) is leaving you wide open to grief

It's no different IF you generally cash the VED disc in. I never do - being taxed makes a car easier to sell privately - I always add the nominal value of the road tax to the figure I have in my head as to value anyway. As long as you have filled in your bit of the V5 and sent it off - what the buyer does with the car is up to him.

I've bought a car before where the previous seller had sent off for a duplicate disc and then cashed it in. Leaving my apparently taxed car untaxed. The DVLA and the police were sympathetic when I had the issue and I wasn't penalised for driving an untaxed car accidentally and that's the only grief I've ever had as a buyer or seller. I've never bought a car privately that wasn't taxed - although in the trade that's the norm of course.

Is this any different to how the system works now ? For the last decade any car that I or my wife have sold has not included the tax disc. This ensures that no trader can sell it on without customer details in full, and that the new keeper has to register it to get a tax disc.

Selling a car with a tax disc (especially to a private buyer) is leaving you wide open to grief

You do not need to regsiter a car to get a tax disc. It is easy to get a tax disc with giving no details at all. If you sell a car to a trader you send off the yellow slip, otherwise you send off the whole thing.

As long as you have advised the DVLA you've sold it, it is no longer your responsibility.

Edited by pd on 04/06/2014 at 17:33

The changes are limited to the cessation of the transfer of VED from one owner to another, the deletion of the tax disc from 1st October 2014 and changes to the payment system from 1st November 2014.

No other changes. So VED will still run for either 6 or 12 months, and if a vehicles is taxed partway through a month, a portion of that months VED is still effectively lost.

So I assume then the answer is yet - the seller and buyer will be paying for the same month twice - surely that's fraud on the government's behalf? Who else would get away with selling the same goods twice without being arrested?

They are also reducing the additional cost for buying a 6-month disk from 10% to 5%, so there will be saving for some people.

I believe from Nov you'll also be able to tax by the month, at 5% over the cost of buying an annual policy. Might make the new system work well for people who lay up cars for several months of the year?

So some lose, but others gain?

I agree with Steve - until someone comes along and tells us different, this is a stealth tax:

28.7m cars on UK roads, say 10% change hands in any month. Average VED £150? Overlap of VED averages 10 days in a month.

That's just under £12m extra the government would get per annum.

Edited by 72 dudes on 04/06/2014 at 16:41