Thread retitled from "Interesting News" which told no one anything.
The number of people not paying their road tax (correct name Vehicle Excise Duty) has topped two million.
According to figures released by the Department for Transport, an estimated 2,193,000 drivers failed to pay their vehicle excise duty last year, up from 1,549,000 in 2005.
The report showed non-payment was costing a small fortune, with £217m in lost revenue in 2006/07, compared with £147m in 2005/06.
But, 80 per cent of that is expected to be recovered through subsequent improvement, a DfT spokesman said.
In recent years the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has run a high-profile TV advertising campaign telling people to pay their road tax on time or face certain prosecution.
Evasion rates are highest for motorcycles and "other" vehicles, the figures show. In addition, evasion among cars and vans that are more than 10 years old is five times as high than those which are less than a decade old.
The report revealed there were 1,338,000 unlicensed cars and vans on the road in 2006, costing an estimated £170 million in lost revenue.
The average value of a licence for these vehicles is £127. The 694 unlicensed motorcycles are costing an estimated £27 million alone.
The largest increase in non-payment was in the North West, the DfT revealed. The statistics in the report are based on checks conducted at 256 sites across the United Kingdom. In total, around 1.3 million registration marks were collected, and checked against computer records.
The data were collected before new measures were introduced by the DVLA in June last year to tackle the problem. The measures included debt collectors to target owners who ignore penalty notices and doubling wheel clamping operations
*taken from AOL'S "news section"*
some quite amazing amounts of money! - cheers billy
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just re-read this, am I missing something?
<< not paying their road tax has topped two million. >>
<< In total, around 1.3 million registration marks were collected, and checked against computer records. >>
me cant do maths me!
billy
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I think they checked 1.3 million registrations then extrapolated the number found to untaxed against the 33 million registrations in the country to arrive at the figure of 2 million untaxed?
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Now 2Million untaxed cars MUST be at least £200Million a year in lost revenue plus no MOT/insurance..
IF GB had any sense, they'd treble the fines for untaxed cars (or lose it) and set private collection companies on the job.. paid by results - together with a trailer.. pay now or we take away.
I suspect that kind of drastic action would get quick results. (would need a police escort in Liverpool and manchester tho)
madf
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.. IF GB had any sense, they'd treble the fines for untaxed cars (or lose it) and set private collection companies on the job.. paid by results - together with a trailer.. pay now or we take away.
If GB had any sense, they would scrap road tax altogether and put it on the price of a litre of fuel (as many others here suggest). It would work out fair for everyone. We could also make redundant the staff responsible for administering RFL at a great saving to the tax payer.
The argument that this would not allow us to get an idea about which cars which are uninsured (by the absence of an up to date tax disc) does not stack up either. All the police have to do is enter the reg no into the MID (Motor Insurance Database), and they will know immediately if the car is insured or not.
This current hype in the press about untaxed cars is just the authorities trying to flex their muscles. If a Police officer stops you for not having tax, he will allow you on your way, once he is satisfied that you have insurance and MOT. He is however duty-bound to report you to the DVLA, whose job it is to decide on an appropriate fine. Should you find yourself in this situation, go and tax the car, it will be back-dated to the start of the month and you will not be fined.
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I think too laterally sometimes, but me still cant do maths, cos i can't make 694 un-taxed motorcycles make £27million alone.! ;-)
more worrying though is the fact that a good percentage of the great un-taxed 2mill will also be un-insured, just waiting to bump into a car near you!
billy
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>>more worrying though is the fact that a good percentage of the great un-taxed 2mill will also be un-insured
This is the best arguement for scapping Road Fund Licence and 3rd party insurance and combining both with a surcharge of fuel. That would mean everyone was taxed and insured on our roads. May be that is too simple for our government to understand and the consequent reduction in our civil service as it simpler to collect tax in bulk rather than individually. If any one wanted more insurance then they could purchase further cover to suit their needs.
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Roger
I read frequently, but only post when I have something useful to say.
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Just a load of rubbish, our thrice-hourly dose of fear from HMG.
It's probably just that these cars haven't been properly recorded as scrapped.
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If they stuck the tax on fuel then this wouldn't be a problem.
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Note that this level of computer competence and efficiency is what may be running road charging and National ID Card Systems! No chance of efficiency there then! Loop holes being picked out by criminals and illegal immigrants; law abiding citizens fined up to £5000 for failing to notify change of address. Don't you just love this country?
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If they stuck the tax on fuel then this wouldn't be a problem.
Would never work.
The boneheads would ignore the insurance/tax part of the deal and concentrate solely on the fact that petrol was £1.30 a litre or something similar. Bear in mind that these are the same folk who complain that the fuel is already "the highest in Europe" (errr, no it isn't, and indeed it isn't even all that more expensive than most European countries any more). Expect fuel blockades overnight.
Don't disagree with the principle though.
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Jase1: Would never work.
No reason why it shouldn't - charging road tax and 3rd party insurance on fuel works fine in Australia. And, because trumped-up insurance claims hurt the state coffers, there's an extra incentive to clamp down on these too.
And, with a higher price clearly visible at the pumps, drivers of fuel inefficient vehicles will think twice next time they buy a car and high mileage drivers will be more inclined to use alternative transport where they can.
Whether there's the political will to make it work, and to provide the aforementioned alternatives, that's a different question entirely! But there should be an extra £200 million in funds available to make a start, at least!
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2,000,000 driving without road tax will be a drop in the ocean compared to how many more would evade if road pricing were brought in!
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the problem could be easily solved, with all the cameras lurking about the place nowadays (e.g. ANPR)
there needs to be a crack down and significantly higher penalties for 'failing to register your vehicle' inc clamping or seizure powers
and then the rest of us who do comply with the laws will be joined by the increasing numbers that currently don't
it's not rocket science and fairly easily achieved. You buy a car, you've got a month to register it..after that it's cheerio car unless you pay a steep fine and storage etc
if you gave local council wardens access (via a control room) to DVLA records and a £5 bonus every time they found one, they'd be falling over each other looking for them wouldn't they
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Just a load of rubbish, our thrice-hourly dose of fear from HMG. It's probably just that these cars haven't been properly recorded as scrapped.
Agree with that - when you see the highest rate of evasion is motorcycles & old vehicles.
Clearly there IS a problem of untaxed vehicles .........on the road
But the stats. are bumped by the number of old mopeds and bikes kept in sheds & garages or scrapped/dismantled and not properly SORN'd.
The same with old cars ? ...if you scrapped an old car BEFORE SORN came into force and didn't "notify" DVLA then surely the computer still "thinks" you are driving around in it ? Is that the case ?
The numbers do seem awfully high
Jacks
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I think too laterally sometimes, but me still cant do maths, cos i can't make 694 un-taxed motorcycles make £27million alone.! ;-)
Sounds like a classic case of the decimal point being in the wrong place somewhere.
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L\'escargot.
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A percentage of them are driving around the Spanish costas.
On a related point, if there are, shall we say, a million plus cars untaxed, and these are big lumps of metal that spend a large percentage of their time static on the streets, what chance for a successful national identity card scheme.
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1ithought SORN was supposed to be a deterent ,ie 2million x £80 plus back tax is an awful lot of wonga,incidently i didnt recieve a road tax reminder last month probably cause they know im a regular payer!
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I am always dubious of statistics - especially government ones.
On what dates were these collected and how many of the cars had more than a months tax unpaid.
Allowing that many people only tax in the days that used to be allowed - 14 days after its due - and that computers will take time to be updated from when people pay at the post office, I would want to know how the figures break down into say less than 14 days, less than a month, three months, etc.
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I've just used that number plate checking link on an earlier thread, and five of my old cars are still listed, although i know that three were definetly scrapped. So i think that the numbers may be artificially boosted by incorrect reporting/recording, as suggested earlier in this thread.
billy
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Why should people who drive higher mileages pay more tax? High mileage drivers are mainly those who need their vehicles for business purposes, and we pay enough on fuel duty as it is, thank you very much.
I bet none of those who enthuse about VED being loaded onto fuel are above average mileage drivers who have to pay for it out of their own pockets.
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Road Tax is a fair few quid - 2 cars £400/yr for me - I pay it as a law abiding motorist (mostly).
What are the chances of Joe Bloggs getting caught - leaves early in the morning for work (dark), does 12 hrs shift (Car sits in Co Car Park or side of building site) or whatever and comes home in the dark.
Unless he/she has a accident (and the police attend!!) the chances of being caught are few and far between.
If they are caught the fine is £50 + back RFL.
If on the other hand the RFL was say £20.00 / yr- pays for PO checking MoT & Ins (and the balance of Gordon's share is on the fuel) and raise the fines for NO RFL, NO MoT & No Insurance to say £250 / offence then
The Benefit of avoiding RFL is low (£20) and the penalty is high £250 - therfore more cars will be RFL (MoTd and Insured) and GB gets his tax from BP/Esso/Shell in the form of bigger cheques once per mth.
The Poll tax failed as it is difficult to tax moving objects (people or cars) easier to tax fixed assests (Houses or Petrol pumps)
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You could easily eliminate VED evasion. Make every vehicle display a disc on the windscreen to show that the owner had paid the duty. Then it would be obvious to any passing policeman or traffic warden that a particular vehicle was on the road illegally and they could have it clamped and report the owner for failing to pay and take him to court.
I don't know why the government have never tried that idea, it is foolproof. I am sure the police and local authorities would enthusiastic enforce a law like that.
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It is enforced by Wheelclamp now and again around here - operation Cubbitt. Brilliant Man and machines working in total harmony. And no it wasn't me that grassed a local burglar to the LVLO, they took his van whilst he was in his methadone induced sleep. Awww shame on them !
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