Another slice of RIP OFF Britain--The DVLA !!

[Steve L]

Have you ever taxed your tow car for 6 months and felt the pain?
I taxed my car for 6 months costing £112-75p.
The first rip off is that it cost's you £20-50p extra to do that twice rather than tax your car for a year.
Most people who tax 6 months at a time do it because they can't afford £205 for a years tax in one go!
I taxed my car as I was selling it on and had every intention to get a refund on the months left on the tax disc.
Now comes the second RIP OFF!!
If you apply for a refund of a tax disc, you get refunded at the 12 month rate which in my case of a 4 month refund left my out of pocket by £6-83.

Point being.
If you got refunded by a supermarket in a simlar way for example, two cans of coke bought seperately at 60p per tin, but refunded at the 12 can multi-pack price of 39.9p, you would be annoyed and rightly so, because it would be in breach of trading standards.
Also isn't this yet another example where the less well off get hit hardest?

Atb Steve L.

 

[colin-yorkshire1]

hi steve
it's allways been the same mate, plus if you buy a car towards the end of a month you have to pay the tax from the begining of the month so if you need the car straight away and can't wait for the begining of the next month you have to pay road tax for the period BEFORE you owned the car. good eh.

 

[Dustydog]

Steve
You must have seen that advert on tv for money loans. They are targetting the poor. APR is over 2000%. Yes over 2000%

 

[Philspadders]

be real here over the 2000% . These companies lend to very high risk people, on very short terms. £200 for one month and it costs £16.0 in interest. Thats to people who will probably dissapear and not repay the loan. That just about covers the paperwork , wages and office costs.

its also a legal , regulated and damned safer than a loan shark.

 

[Rioja]

Steve, if you can afford to run a car that has a £205 tax demand then the £205 shouldn't be a problem either

You could always try a cheaper rated vehicle

 

[DeliDave_]

Steve, if you can afford to run a car that has a £205 tax demand then the £205 shouldn't be a problem either

You could always try a cheaper rated vehicle

What cheaper rated vehicle would pull a caravan,you would need a lot of money to get a biggish car in a low tax band if one exists.Its one thing finding £205, £20K or £30K is way out of many peoples reach.

 

[Rioja]

My VW Passat is 9 years old, £155 per year tax......... save 25% !
Won't pull the biggest vans but will handle your average 4 berth no problem.
about 50-55 MPG solo on a run,33-36 MPG towing.

Probably worth about £1500 as it has 160,000 on the clock.

 

[earlyriser]

just renewed my photo card licence
at a cost of £20 plus £5 for the photo
good old dvla nearly a days pension

 

[602]

Hi,
A pre-1973 Land Rover will cost you nothing to tax, and not a lot to insure. Spares still cost 1960s prices. Nil depreciation. And it can tow 3500kg. Fitted with a Dicovery TDi engine, it should return about 30mpg. There are some extremely tidy examples out there, but they are starting to cost real money - £1000 and upwards.

Tax exempt Range Rovers are getting rare, probably all been shipped to Holland.
Get one for towing your caravan, and swap your present car for something in the £0 to £35 tax bracket. Two can be cheaper than one.
602

 

[MichaelE]

Would love to pay £205 a year, my wifes Pug 107 is free but my motorbike is £70 a year work that one out!! like the way they charge £2.50 to pay with a credit card.

 

[Steve L]

Thats why I changed to a Rover 75 CDT tourer. £155 tax per annum and 30% better fuel consumption towing compared to the Laguna.

My point is that generally the less well off have no choice but to tax their cars 6 months at a time.

I can remember when as an apprentice I was on a meager £22 a week and had to tax my ex post office morris minor van 3 months at a time. I couldn't afford to buy a new battery so had to use the starting handle every day even in summer to start the engine. Some of the lads on better wages took the mick but when their Mk1 escorts wouldn't start on cold damp winter mornings my handle still worked well.
Atb steve L.

 

[Philspadders]

hen i was an apprentice i caught the bus.. 2 buses to be exact.
i was 22 when i got my first car.... a clapped out old min. At 24 , married wiht a child the car went and i was back on the bus.

Then again , on £25 per week in 1980 i paid £10 board , and the rest went on going out on Friday and Saturday nights but i still managed to save some money for a holiday.

 

[NickinFrance]

I bought a new (to me) car in the UK last year & taxed it for 6 months just to get it back to the port to bring back to France the day I bought it.
I had to use my son's UK address to get the Road Fund License but when I applied for a refund was told that because the owners address hadn't been changed in the V5c they had rejected the claim.
£89 for the privilege of driving a car in the UK for 5 hours.
Then to add insult to injury, they said they had destroyed the Tax Disk & if I wanted to appeal the claim I would have to pay £20 for a replacement disk & that any refund would only date from the date they received the appeal letter, with the replacement disk.

 

[Philspadders]

why not buy a car in France ? You would have saved the road fund and the ferry cost.

 

[Lutz]

Why did you pay Vehicle Tax at all, Nick? If you bought the car with the intention of exporting it, you can benefit from the Personal Export Scheme and you don't have to pay Vehicle Tax and you are even exempt from VAT at the time of purchase if it falls within the definition of a new vehicle (it can be up to 6 months old or up to 6000km on the clock and still be considered new). The vehicle then has to be out of the country within 2 months. I have used the scheme myself and it saved me a lot of money.
Check the following website: http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/sectors/consumers/personal-vehicles.htm

 

[NickinFrance]

Phil, because a lower spec version of the same car, same age, with similar mileage would have cost me 8,000 € more in France.
Lutz, it was a 2 year old car & the export scheme is only for new cars, even then I could avoid paying 17.5% VAT in the UK only to pay 19.6% TVA in France.

 

[Lutz]

It is my understanding that if the vehicle doesn't qualify as "new" you will not be able to recover VAT, but you would still be exempt from Vehicle Tax.
If the Personal Export Scheme does not apply to used cars it would not be possible for someone without a UK address to purchase a used car in the UK for export later. I cannot believe that this is the case. I was certainly able to purchase a new one without providing a UK address and I would have thought that this would apply to used cars, too, even if you cannot recover VAT already paid.

 

[Rioja]

Nick, you complain about it costing you £89 to save 8000 euro.........................

 

[NickinFrance]

Lutz,
The UK VAT scheme for used cars is complex http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/sectors/motors/selling-cars.htm#2 my reading of this is that a customer only pays VAT on the dealers profit margin, therefore there could be very little to reclaim.
To legally drive a UK registered vehicle (anywhere in the EU), it must be legal in the UK which means it must be insured, Taxed & with a valid MoT if more than 3 years old & you do need a UK address to legally get a Road Fund License.

 

[NickinFrance]

Nick, you complain about it costing you £89 to save 8000 euro.........................

It was the way it was done that annoyed me.

 

[Lutz]

It is not true that the vehicle must be taxed while abroad. It must only be insured. No tax authority is in any way interested in whether a foreign registered vehicle is taxed back in its home country. Theoretically, you can make a SORN (Statutory Off Road Notification) as soon as the car has left the UK, although you may have problems should the vehicle ever return.

 

[Gafferbill]

http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/BuyingAndSellingAVehicle/ImportingAndExportingAVehicle/DG_4022582

 

[Lutz]

Once the car is out of the country, it is basically outside the area of jurisdiction of the authorities back home and the foreign authorities aren't interested so long as one is considered a non-resident for tax purposes. I have seen cars with UK plates over here on the Continent with tax discs that had expired over a year ago without any action being taken. It wouldn't be possible anyway if the owner is no longer a UK resident.

 

[NickinFrance]

I have seen cars with UK plates over here on the Continent with tax discs that had expired over a year ago without any action being taken.

I know people who have lived in France for many years with-out a valid UK tax disk but I have also seen the Police stopping every UK registered vehicle going into a local large builders merchant & outside Dinard Airport checking documents & a convoy of car transporters to take the illegal ones away.
As always, the problem is with insurance if they have an accident.

 

[Lutz]

But insurance and tax are two separate issues. One can insure a car without it being taxed, but not the other way round (tax without insurance). Presumably those that were taken off the road were confiscated because they were not insured, not because they were not taxed, or the owners were considered by the French authorities as being residents of France and not visitors, in which case they would have been commiting tax evasion in France, but not in the UK.