Do we still need Motor Tax offices?

Owen

Looking at the Citizens Information website, there's about 46 motor tax offices in Ireland, and despite a shift to people renewing tax online, a lot of people still prefer to go renew their tax in person (I see the queues outside the Cork office every day). If you very conservately estimate that there would be an average of 20 staff there (There's probably a lot more), and that they're on an average wage of 25k a year (And there's people on lots more than that too), that works out at a wage bill of something around 23 Million per year. That's just wages, not including lighting, heating, premises, utilities, insurance, etc. I've a feeling the truer figure would be closer to 100 Million if you include a proper head count, wage bill, and overall running costs.

So it's costing a fair bit, but also the location of motor tax offices aren't great either. Here in Cork, people have to travel into the City from all other towns and might have to take journeys of over an hour to renew their licenses, or pay their motor tax.

So ... why not shift the motor tax and license renewal system to the Post Offices? There's a Post Office in most towns, and they already handle TV licenses, Dog Licenses, Election Registers, and other non-post related services.

Before anyone says it, no, I've no ties to the Post Office, and nothing against the Motor Tax offices either. I just don't see the need for centralised motor tax offices when there will be a stronger shift to online renewals in time, and if we ever get to the credit card driver's license, that's something that could easily be handled by the Post Office too.

If anyone does work in a Motor Tax office, I'm open to correction. I've probably made some wrong assumptions in regards to staff numbers and such.

colm_mcm

There's a large number of people who declare their car off the road (rightly or wrongly) the online system doesn't allow for this.

The whole thing needs overhauling, the top rates need to come down, the bottom rates need to come up (3 months on my car = 1 year on my missus's) and some sort of penalty for not taxing online.

Owen

Totally agree Colm, but for the purposes of this thread, maybe we could keep the price of motor tax, and SORN declarations for another thread/discussion?

Buffman

I agree with the OP, in the UK, you can do all your vehicle tax and licence business at the post office.

colm_mcm wrote: »

some sort of penalty for not taxing online.

It's worth remembering that there is no online system for taxing commercial vehicles at the moment.

colm_mcm

In that case, yes we do need them

A post office worker particularly a local one is not in the ideal position to deal with specific motor tax situations, the queues in tax offices are often caused by punters arguing over getting stuff stamped, educating motorists on what they need to do to get the car taxed etc.

Post office won't have the expertise or experience to do it properly, also it raises problems with impartiality and more robberies for blank discs and takings.


The sorn and online aspects are central to the reason we need the tax offices

Etnies

Yea great idea make more people unemployed

Owen

Surely if it works in the UK, it can work here?

The issues you've described are quickly put away with some staff training. Tricky questions which crop up often can be solved with a guidebook on hand to staff members, and for anything particularly tough, the staff member, and/or customer could be directed to a central helpline.

Saying it won't work because the staff aren't capable of being professional enough is a bit Irish. Once proper training and support staff/materials are in place, it shouldn't be an issue.

unkel

Motor tax on fuel and close them all down. Would save us all a lot of money (except the heaviest polluters and people who are not tax compliant)

MrThrifty

Etnies wrote: »

Yea great idea make more people unemployed

Don't worry, that only seems to happen in the private sector in this country :rolleyes:

pete4130

Not everyone has a computer, access to a computer or know how to use a computer as hard as that is to believe. They may not have a credit card or debit card to use to pay online. In the UK alone the rate of functional illiteracy is anywhere between 12-16% of adults.

Given that in Ireland only about 60-70% of the country has access to the internet means there are reasons for motor tax offices. It also provides people with jobs to spend money in the community and economy.

As for post offices...they are very busy in the mornings, lunchtime and evenings....the same times the motor tax office would be very busy. Imagine all those people form the motor tax office piling into the post office at lunchtime when your gran is in there collecting her pension, sending a birthday card to a grandchild, paying a few bills and having a 10 minute chat with the middle aged lady thats worked in the local post office the past 25 years. I'm sure you wouldn't be happy spending your entire lunchtime Quing up there to pay your motor tax.

Then there are people in my situation who have lost their license while living abroad and need to call a real life person in a motor tax office to explain my situation for them to send me a letter of entitlement to me here to get my license exchanged for a local one.

Bullseye1

Etnies wrote: »

Yea great idea make more people unemployed

I would think most people do not want people to lose their jobs. But are you really suggesting that we should have jobs in the public sector just for the sake of it?

Bullseye1

unkel wrote: »

Motor tax on fuel and close them all down. Would save us all a lot of money (except the heaviest polluters and people who are not tax compliant)

This is the most logical and fairer way of handling road usage.

pete4130

Bullseye1 wrote: »

I would think most people do not want people to lose their jobs. But are you really suggesting that we should have jobs in the public sector just for the sake of it?

off topic.

Bullseye1

pete4130 wrote: »

off topic.

How is it it off topic it was in response to another posters response. LOL. How does it feel in the back seat?

CiniO

In my experience motor tax office are absolutely useless.
Any time I needed anything else from them except from renewing motor tax, I had big problems with it, and eventually I never got what I wanted. Probably at some stage I'll write the new thread to describe what it all was about.

Owen

pete4130 wrote: »

Given that in Ireland only about 60-70% of the country has access to the internet means there are reasons for motor tax offices. It also provides people with jobs to spend money in the community and economy.

But at what cost. Is it really worth spending up to 100 million a year to keep a relatively small number of people in those jobs when the service can be better provided elsewhere?

pete4130 wrote: »

As for post offices...they are very busy in the mornings, lunchtime and evenings....the same times the motor tax office would be very busy. Imagine all those people form the motor tax office piling into the post office at lunchtime when your gran is in there collecting her pension, sending a birthday card to a grandchild, paying a few bills and having a 10 minute chat with the middle aged lady thats worked in the local post office the past 25 years. I'm sure you wouldn't be happy spending your entire lunchtime Quing up there to pay your motor tax.

That's easily solved in the same way Banks solve the Bureau de Change queue. Have a single hatch and separate queue for motor enquiries (Licenses and Tax), and when that queue is empty, let it deal with post office enquiries.

pete4130 wrote: »

Then there are people in my situation who have lost their license while living abroad and need to call a real life person in a motor tax office to explain my situation for them to send me a letter of entitlement to me here to get my license exchanged for a local one.

Again, easily solved with a central helpline to the Dept of the Environment in Shannon.

colm_mcm

I just don't see how it'll be more efficient moving from big tax offices to lots of small ones. Average transaction in tax office is 10 mins which means longer queues, more paperwork going to and fro, no supervisors on the ground, job losses or changes to public sector workers which means massive costs to us, or retraining for post office workers which means they want higher wages too.

pete4130

Owen wrote: »

But at what cost. Is it really worth spending up to 100 million a year to keep a relatively small number of people in those jobs when the service can be better provided elsewhere?



That's easily solved in the same way Banks solve the Bureau de Change queue. Have a single hatch and separate queue for motor enquiries (Licenses and Tax), and when that queue is empty, let it deal with post office enquiries.



Again, easily solved with a central helpline to the Dept of the Environment in Shannon.

And you expect the Irish government to implement that cost effectively and for it to work properly?

Can the service be better provided in a small post office that can barely have 10 people inside (the post office on Ormonde Quay nearby the old Motor tax office by the Forcourts for example?).

Buffman

colm_mcm wrote: »

Post office won't have the expertise or experience to do it properly, also it raises problems with impartiality and more robberies for blank discs and takings.

I think that's being a bit harsh on the PO's. You can apply for your passport at the PO, so putting a system in place for tax/licences shouldn't be much trouble.

Also, I wouldn't be in favor of PO's actually giving out tax discs or licences on the spot. Again, like the passports, your application could be sent to a central motor tax office and the tax/DL posted to your registered address. This would also mean you have to keep the address up to date to receive it. If somebody was really stuck they can travel to a central office for on the spot service.

Online taxing should also be available to all vehicles.

Owen

Given that most of the arguments here are based on the ability of either the staff, or the post office itself to handle the volume of enquiries, I think they're both weak arguments. Staff can easily be trained to deal with the added responsibilities, and in terms of capacity, I don't think it'll be so much of an issue and here's why.

In my part of Cork, there's 4 post offices for a relatively small part of the city. Even if 20% of the people decided to all tax their car on the same day, they could still cope. The queues you see at Motor Tax offices are as a result of a centralised location ... currently people from all over Cork as far away as Castletownbere and Youghal must come to Cork to tax their car. The office deals with a few hundred/thousand enquiries a day. But that's because an entire county only has one place to go. If you provide the service in local post offices the load will be evenly spread, and in effect the queues will be significantly shorter. As opposed to losing hours queuing in your local motor tax office, you will lose half an hour in the post office at the very most IMHO.

If it's such a bad unworkable idea, why does it work in the UK?

bogof

Think of the savings on pensions too. A levy on fuel is the way to go leaving a much lower staff level to deal with Vehicle registration . Or this could be merged with the excise people who collect VRT

colm_mcm

Buffman wrote: »

Also, I wouldn't be in favor of PO's actually giving out tax discs or licences on the spot. Again, like the passports, your application could be sent to a central motor tax office and the tax/DL posted to your registered address. This would also mean you have to keep the address up to date to receive it. If somebody was really stuck they can travel to a central office for on the spot service.

But post offices already have the facility to post things to the tax office, they're called letterboxes. What you propose is to have someone there take a form and money, get someone in the tax office to process it and then post it out (via the post office!) How is that
more eficient than someone walking into a tax office and leaving with a tax disc?


The reason we encounter massive queues is that the tax disc expires at the end of a month. Even if the discs were divided up by week, say:

14-08-11
21-08-11
28-08-11
07-09-11

You could have a steady flow through the month instead of 5 days of the month

Victor

Owen wrote: »

Looking at the Citizens Information website, there's about 46 motor tax offices in Ireland, and despite a shift to people renewing tax online, a lot of people still prefer to go renew their tax in person (I see the queues outside the Cork office every day). If you very conservately estimate that there would be an average of 20 staff there (There's probably a lot more), and that they're on an average wage of 25k a year (And there's people on lots more than that too), that works out at a wage bill of something around 23 Million per year. That's just wages, not including lighting, heating, premises, utilities, insurance, etc. I've a feeling the truer figure would be closer to 100 Million if you include a proper head count, wage bill, and overall running costs.

Stop making things up.

http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,23021,en.pdf - page 13. All the motor tax offices cost a total of €52,792,627 to run in 2010 with miscellaneous income of €2,332,639.

Motor tax collected was in the order of €1,026,300,000 http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/2010/02/16/00309.asp http://www.octane.ie/forum/showthread.php?t=53180

Owen

Victor wrote: »

Stop making things up.

http://www.environ.ie/en/Publications/LocalGovernment/Administration/FileDownLoad,23021,en.pdf - page 13. All the motor tax offices cost a total of €52,792,627 to run in 2010 with miscellaneous income of €2,332,639.

I was making guesses, which I posted at the end of my thread I was quite open to correction on. Even 53 million is still quite a chunk of change.

Nice to see the official figures though

corktina

i never understand why people want to queue.before the days of "online" i used to post mine all the time, came back almost the next day

air

Would the 53 million figure include the pension liability for retired ex motor office staff though?
A discount for online renewal would be a start but in reality any productivity or efficiency improvements in the public service are pointless until we start firing people that are no longer required instead of having them redeployed.

Victor

air wrote: »

Would the 53 million figure include the pension liability for retired ex motor office staff though?

To my knowledge yes. Those figures are allocated by programme heading and there is no heading for pensions.

Voodoomelon

Just did some maths for the "tax on the fuel" suggestion.

Currently we take in €1.03 billion from motor tax.
There are 2.63 million issued driving licenses in this country.

Thats €392 per driver per year.
Lets increase it to €500 a year (recession an' all).

Average mileage per person is 12,000 miles (roughly)
Average MPG is 40MPG. (roughly)

Thats 1365 litres of fuel used per person at a cost of €2050 (at €1.50 a litre).

€2050 + €500 in additional tax is €2550.

€2550 divided by the same 1365 litres is an increase to €1.87 for a litre of fuel, or an increase of 37c a litre.

Advantages:
An increase of €284,000,000 in revenue intake.
100% payment compliance.
A further €52,000,000+ saving on motor tax offices.
A much fairer system, you drive more, you use the roads more, you pollute more, you pay more.
If you only drive a car at the weekends, doing a 3000 miles a year, you only pay €125 in tax. If you drive 24,000 miles a year, you pay €1000 in tax.
Further motor tax intake can be achieved from charging haulage companies a flat rate per vehicle.
You can own several cars without worrying about keeping them in tax.
Increased revenue from tourists, foreign nationals and other non-irish vehicles.

Disadvantages:
Motor tax workers loose their jobs. Perhaps they can be re-allocated to other departments? 800 motor tax workers would cost €7.9 million in dole payments per year.

Haulage companies would have a fit. This can be resolved by charging a fixed rate per vehicle and allowing them to offset the fuel cost increase against their tax returns.

There would be rampant crossings of the border to avail of cheaper fuel. As of August 2011, the average price of diesel/petrol in Northern Ireland is €1.65 a litre. Filling a standard 60 litre tank would save €13.20 a fill over southern €1.87 a litre prices. So there would definitely be an incentive there to fill up across the border.
However the limit of that saving would be how far you can travel from your home to cross the border and travel back on €13.20, just to break even. Only border counties would benefit from this, and even then it saves the motorist maybe €5-€10 every two weeks. Worth the hassle of driving 10-30 miles just to fill up?

Merch

colm_mcm wrote: »

There's a large number of people who declare their car off the road (rightly or wrongly) the online system doesn't allow for this.

The whole thing needs overhauling, the top rates need to come down, the bottom rates need to come up (3 months on my car = 1 year on my missus's) and some sort of penalty for not taxing online.

I disagree that the bottom rates need to come up, trying to incentivise people into smaller or less polluting cars wont happen by bringing the margins closer for differing cars.

Im all for reducing the number of motor tax offices, maybe have less per region and scale back rather than completely shut, at least to start with.
I agree with adding the motor tax cost to fuel, maybe a small flat rate and then balance on fuel or if its easier all just on fuel.
Under the current system, I think to create an incentive to use the online service people should be offered a discounted rate.

My only concern at the moment is that Driving Licences are also done through the Motor tax offices, they should be checking a person presenting themselves are who they say they are, it would be impractical to shut all offices for that reason and it would be ridiculous to ask people in an outlying place to travel to a main centre (cork/dublin etc) to do their business.
So possibly have a behind the scenes staff for that and have it all posted in, but authorised/approved by (although someone will come on here and probably say the gardai have enough to be doing) the Gardai who already stamp/approve first applications??? ( cant recal, its been so long since I have had that done? ) they could have some part in approving first applications or even renewals by some means which is secure and can be traced between a licence issuing dept and the gardai.
Either way the licence thing would need to be considered.

Voodoomelon

Merch wrote: »

I disagree that the bottom rates need to come up, trying to incentivise people into smaller or less polluting cars wont happen by bringing the margins closer for differing cars.

But the government doesn't care about this? They only did it to make everyone buy new cars.

Del2005

colm_mcm wrote: »

Post office won't have the expertise or experience to do it properly

You'd think that, when I passed my EC licence I went to my local Tax office to get my full licence. I'd ticked off B, EB, C, EC and W. Handed over my licence and pass cert. The person I handed my licence and pass cert to goes you've no EB on your current licence. My answer was that if I'm allowed to drive a 44t artic why can't I drive a car and trailer. Their response was to ask the person in the next cubical what E was:eek:

Merch

Voodoomelon wrote: »

But the government doesn't care about this? They only did it to make everyone buy new cars.

True, but there is no argument (or no validity in a suggestion) to bring smaller/less polluting vehicles motor tax up AND at the same time bring large/more polluting vehicles motor tax down, just to bring the values nearer because 3 months on one car is the same as a year on another?

Del2005

Merch wrote: »

True, but there is no argument (or no validity in a suggestion) to bring smaller/less polluting vehicles motor tax up AND at the same time bring large/more polluting vehicles motor tax down, just to bring the values nearer because 3 months on one car is the same as a year on another?

Well they claimed it was for the environment. They should base it on the vehicles total CO2 not just what comes out the exhaust. How many thousands of km's will have to be driven in the new car to make it even for the scrapping of a good car and construction/transport of the new one.

Then we'd see how "green" new cars are and how "polluting" older cars are.

Merch

Del2005 wrote: »

Well they claimed it was for the environment. They should base it on the vehicles total CO2 not just what comes out the exhaust. How many thousands of km's will have to be driven in the new car to make it even for the scrapping of a good car and construction/transport of the new one.

Then we'd see how "green" new cars are and how "polluting" older cars are.

Im not sure if they did say that it was based on a vehicles total CO2 or not (Im not saying they didnt) I just dont recal that being the way it was worded or implied. I personally think it should be based on the total CO2 and then we could really measure the benefit of having a new car or not, but some people that need a replacement might not be so happy about that, as it opens a possibility to be levied for the extra carbon.

I agree about what you are saying about how long it takes to write off the carbon cost of a new vehicle, before even breaking even let alone having any benefit.
I was really replying on the basis that most "old" cars now are not even that old and largely the stock was replaced a decade ago, with significantly less cars from before the mid 90's, so most small cars will probably still produce less CO2 and likely be driven less, than similar aged cars of a larger size/engine capacity.
I still cant see that two cars of a similar age, one small and the other larger should be closer together on the motor tax spectrum for any reason though.
I think the whole thing about cars and grants and tax exemptions was more a political effort to stop the motor industry dying, but all that money (mostly) just left the country no to mention the loss of tax through the grant/exemptions, to what benefit, well we seem to already agree, very little (well a small amount of CO2, probably a very small amount)

Either way, I still think we could do away with motor tax offices, maybe they could be all folded into a licencing dept and at least the people there get to keep their jobs, regardless of whether they are really giving value for money (im not saying they aren't, but a proper assessment would be needed to see if they really are) Im sure its all worthwhile??:rolleyes:

Buffman

colm_mcm wrote: »

But post offices already have the facility to post things to the tax office, they're called letterboxes.

Ye, the post office would really only serve to allow people to pay cash. Also, the ideal system would allow the post office to do it instantly, maybe with an extension of the online system, so your disc is posted to you on the same day.

colm_mcm wrote: »

What you propose is to have someone there take a form and money, get someone in the tax office to process it and then post it out (via the post office!) How is that more eficient than someone walking into a tax office and leaving with a tax disc?

Well, it's more efficient in that instead of the 46 current tax offices, you have one or two central offices making and sending discs and licences (like they have with the passports). The staff are already in place in the post offices so minimal extra cost there.

cmd

Del2005 wrote: »

You'd think that, when I passed my EC licence I went to my local Tax office to get my full licence. I'd ticked off B, EB, C, EC and W. Handed over my licence and pass cert. The person I handed my licence and pass cert to goes you've no EB on your current licence. My answer was that if I'm allowed to drive a 44t artic why can't I drive a car and trailer. Their response was to ask the person in the next cubical what E was:eek:

I think you'll find that you did not sit a test in EB - rules and regulations changed to bring us in line with Europe several years ago so that now you have to do a test in each category. I found that out when the same thing happened to me and when it came in, the person I dealt with in the tax office had only heard it on the news the night before. You cannot blame the staff in these offices if changes to regulations are not passed down to them....

Del2005

cmd wrote: »

I think you'll find that you did not sit a test in EB - rules and regulations changed to bring us in line with Europe several years ago so that now you have to do a test in each category. I found that out when the same thing happened to me and when it came in, the person I dealt with in the tax office had only heard it on the news the night before. You cannot blame the staff in these offices if changes to regulations are not passed down to them....

They didn't know what E was, not if I was entitled to it or not.

Our man in Havana

Owen wrote: »

If it's such a bad unworkable idea, why does it work in the UK?

In the UK they still have local DVLA offices that deal with the too difficult cases where a post office is unable to handle.

air

Another factor in favour of abolishing motor tax would be the savings that would be made in Garda and court time in dealing with enforcement, not to mention the time savings for the whole population. Surely it is desirable to move towards a system that saves every motorist in the country time and hassle every year.

jetfiremuck

If you think of how stupid it is that motor tax office dont have longer opening hours rather than the crazy times they operate under now considering that all they are is a collection point for the government. Nearly all the people that go there are paying in. What inepitidude. The post office can do it like the lottery card purchases. Ffs,