UK loose £80m in revenue after scrapping car tax discs

Tabnabs

Ouch! Doesn't bode well for a similar move here.

The government looks to have lost as much as £80m of revenue as a result of its decision to scrap car tax discs a year ago. The move has also led to a doubling in the number of unlicensed vehicles on British roads.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) ended the need for drivers to display a valid tax disc in October 2014, saying that the move would save the taxpayer £10m a year by making the system more efficient. However, that decision looks to have backfired, after official figures published on Thursday showed that the exchequer has lost as much as eight times the intended saving.

An analysis of road users carried out in the summer showed that about 1.4% of vehicles were being driven without vehicle excise duty. This was up from just 0.6% two years ago, when a disc was still required. The Department for Transport (DfT) estimated that about 560,000 vehicles were untaxed. Motoring organisations claimed when the measures were announced that the abolition of the tax disc after 93 years – part of the government’s purge on bureaucracy – would fail.

The move, which suffered a number of admin problems at the start, also led to thousands of innocent motorists having their cars clamped. Many of those who have not taxed their car may well have failed to receive official notices reminding them to get their tax renewed in the post. Under the old scheme, the tax disc provided a visual reminder when it was due. It was also easy for police to spot untaxed cars – something that it is no longer possible.

Last week it emerged that the DVLA had immobilised or towed away almost 100,000 cars in the past 12 months – a 58% rise on the previous year. It said it now posts almost 3m reminders each month, at considerable cost.

David Bizley, the RAC’s chief engineer, said: “These are very worrying and disappointing statistics indeed. Sadly, the concerns we raised about the number of car tax evaders going up at the time the tax disc was confined to history have become a reality. We really cannot afford for this to increase again, for the sake of both road safety and the country’s finances. Hopefully, much of the increase in evasion is due to the system being new, and these figures will reduce as motorists become more familiar with how it works.”

The DfT estimates the number of untaxed vehicles by carrying out a roadside survey every two years. Figures suggest that the loss to exchequer was £80m in the last year, up from £35m in 2013.

DVLA said it has always recognised the potential for the number of untaxed vehicles to rise “temporarily”, and that a significant chunk of the £80m would be recouped by pursuing tax evaders. Last year, it collected £33m through the process.

Oliver Morley, the DVLA’s chief executive, said: “Almost 99% of all vehicles on the road are correctly taxed: that’s around £6bn in vehicle tax passed to the Treasury every year. We write to every registered vehicle keeper in the UK to remind them when their tax is due, and we have introduced a range of measures to make vehicle tax easy to pay. At the same time, we are taking action against those who are determined to break the law.”

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/nov/26/ministers-lose-80-million-revenue-after-scrapping-car-tax-discs

LeChienMefiant

£80M - £35M - £10M = £25M
(2015 untaxed - 2013 untaxed - cost of printing discs*)
*although it's unclear where the estimate of the savings came from, they may have already factored in the increased non-compliance

ironclaw

I wouldn't call it a failure on the tax disc side, it's more an enforcement failure. I'm all for the scrapping here and ANPR to the hilt on every single major road and give GoSafe a contract as well for spot checks as well. Online and paperless tax would be a golden opportunity to allow people tax by the day, week or month so it's pretty favourable I think.

gctest50

Just scrap it altogether and stick it on fuel - use the car less, pay less

the "mechanism" is already there for taxing fuel

simple wins

no motor tax offices

no motor tax website to be built & maintained

no keeping motor tax database in sync with apnr stuff

no fixing up errors in motor tax database

no more " my cat ate the tax disk " at checkpoints

no more hassle for those into old/classic cars - just take it out of the shed when the sun comes out

.

colm_mcm

this thread again!

bigroad

Vote Renua they will sort the motor tax issue.

Cee-Jay-Cee

gctest50 wrote: »

Just scrap it altogether and stick it on fuel - use the car less, pay less

the "mechanism" is already there for taxing fuel

simple wins

no motor tax offices

no motor tax website to be built & maintained

no keeping motor tax database in sync with apnr stuff

no fixing up errors in motor tax database

no more " my cat ate the tax disk " at checkpoints

no more hassle for those into old/classic cars - just take it out of the shed when the sun comes out

.

Makes absolute sense and so therefore will never be implemented. Only ridiculous ineffective and expensive measures are ever introduced in this country.

CiniO

It's so backwards to still be collecting tax on vehicle in 21st Century.
Something which was introduced 100 years ago, to tax cars which were then a luxurious item, is still happening, even though cars are not a luxury anymore, rather necessity in modern world.

Red Kev

I'd be in favour of adding it to the cost of fuel along with a cost for basic third party insurance.

But no government has the balls to do it and face the backlash off taxi drivers, transport companies etc.

The other problem is that opposition parties here would spend years screaming about it, to then do nothing when in power.

What's needed is enforcement with existing ANPR cameras. A quicker fine system, quicker court procedures and take the money off their PAYE, SW payments.

At the very least replace the tax, NCT and insurance discs with stickers on the reg plate like Germany and Sweden to make offenders more obvious.

joeysoap

Sticking it on petrol/diesel seems the easiest way to do it , depending on how much you add you might have tto factor in the number of petrol stations in the border counties which would be affected, plus the loss to the exchequer of the thousands of NI motorists who currently fill up in the south and thus pay our fuel taxes. Figures come out on a regular basis now showing VAT and other taxes are up on last year, how much of that is down to NI shoppers now shopping and filling up in the south?

seamus

gctest50 wrote: »

Just scrap it altogether and stick it on fuel - use the car less, pay less

the "mechanism" is already there for taxing fuel

simple wins

no motor tax offices

no motor tax website to be built & maintained

no keeping motor tax database in sync with apnr stuff

no fixing up errors in motor tax database

no more " my cat ate the tax disk " at checkpoints

no more hassle for those into old/classic cars - just take it out of the shed when the sun comes out

.

I guess the one barrier standing in the way of this is that the motor tax system is the only real way of keeping track of ownership.
Without motor tax, loads more people will buy and sell vehicles without bothering to change over the ownership docs.

You can NCT without being the owner and people will realise that if their name isn't on the car, they won't get in trouble with automated cameras.

So again more enforcement would be necessary. Maybe a €5k fine for failing to send in the change document and automatic assumption of liability in relation to motoring offences. But these are painful to enforce.

As mentioned above, if there's a failing in the UK system, it's an enforcement issue. Obviously the discs were far more effective in catching evaders than they realised because plods could just scan them as they walked past.

Without some kind of handheld scanner or app, this whole enforcement route has been lost without being replaced. Even then it would require the officer to be actively scanning with the app.

osheen

At the moment the RSA can scan my truck reg and bring up its full history of tax/cvrt tests what its failed on etc . They also walk through coach parking areas at fetivals/concerts and do the same to coachs - so no technical reasons ANPR cameras cant do the same for cars .

Sh1tbag OToole

ironclaw wrote: »

I wouldn't call it a failure on the tax disc side, it's more an enforcement failure. I'm all for the scrapping here and ANPR to the hilt on every single major road and give GoSafe a contract as well for spot checks as well. Online and paperless tax would be a golden opportunity to allow people tax by the day, week or month so it's pretty favourable I think.

ANPR is very big brother. Better to put it on the fuel

Martypants1

gctest50 wrote: »

Just scrap it altogether and stick it on fuel - use the car less, pay less

the "mechanism" is already there for taxing fuel

simple wins

no motor tax offices

no motor tax website to be built & maintained

no keeping motor tax database in sync with apnr stuff

no fixing up errors in motor tax database

no more " my cat ate the tax disk " at checkpoints

no more hassle for those into old/classic cars - just take it out of the shed when the sun comes out

.

Seems like perfect sense! Then there is no incentive to buy lower emission cars however which needs to happen with climate change issue.

JJJJNR

News just in years ago - car's didn't cause the ice caps to melt.

Mycroft H

Don''t understand the hate around discs. Garda has a brief look at the window; all's in order. Away you go. No having to go scan anything with his smartphone. And I'm sure having a Garda looking in a window is cheaper than ANPR cameras

Brasso

Martypants1 wrote: »

Seems like perfect sense! Then there is no incentive to buy lower emission cars however which needs to happen with climate change issue.

VRT could still be based on CO2. And due to European regulations and things like CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) car manufacturers have no choice but to build vehicles that emit less CO2. So in the grand scheme of things car makers won't be influenced by the demands of the tiny Irish market.

Joe 90

In fact, around here in Ilford a bit to the East of London, I see quite a few cars clamped for not being taxed. It has also meant the end of guys dealing in cars from the pavement outside where they live. The only way they could get away with it would be to tax the car as soon as they buy it.

ironclaw

Mycroft H wrote: »

Don''t understand the hate around discs. Garda has a brief look at the window; all's in order. Away you go. No having to go scan anything with his smartphone. And I'm sure having a Garda looking in a window is cheaper than ANPR cameras

ANPR is cheaper if done right as it free's up Gardai to do other, more meaningful tasks. There is just zero incentive to make the Gardai an efficient organisation. A single Garda on the side of the road can spot check maybe 200 cars in 30 mins, then moves on. A system on the M50 for example could perhaps do 100,000 cars per day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Add in a few more around the country and some spot checks in vans, then you'll find it very tricky to evade and we might actually get some compliance. NCT and Insurance is simple to amalgamate as well.

gizmo555

Sh1tbag OToole wrote: »

ANPR is very big brother.

^^^^ This!!!

Is allowing the state to continuously track our whereabouts a reasonable and proportionate solution to the problem of collecting tax?

gctest50

gizmo555 wrote: »

^^^^ This!!!

Is allowing the state to continuously track our whereabouts a reasonable and proportionate solution to the problem of collecting tax?

have a mobile phone ? track you no problem

have a phone and use google location ?

https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

don't have a phone ? facial recognition :

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/welfare-fraudster-caught-using-facial-recognition-software-1.2277707

.

gizmo555

gctest50 wrote: »

have a mobile phone ? track you no problem

have a phone and use google location ?

https://www.google.com/maps/timeline

(a) The Gardaí can only get access to your phone and Internet usage records on foot of an investigation into an offence to which a sentence of 5 years in prison could apply, and
(b) anyway, the Court of Justice of the European Union has found that the European directive on which that law is based breaches our fundamental right to privacy.

gctest50 wrote: »

don't have a phone ? facial recognition :


http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/courts/circuit-court/welfare-fraudster-caught-using-facial-recognition-software-1.2277707

The pictures used were ones which the defendant voluntarily allowed to be taken of him when applying for social welfare. This is not the same as mass surveillance of the entire driving population of the country to catch a small proportion of tax evaders.

gizmo555

LIGHTNING wrote: »

Take off your tinfoil hat would you. Its not like its Minority Report its on the odd junction and in Garda cars.

Actually, it's very like Minority Report and the Guards are very enthusiastic about accessing mass surveillance data.

For example, Germany has a population of around 80m. Ours is around 4.6m.

In 2008, German police made ca. 12,700 requests for citizens' mobile phone and internet usage data. In the same year, Gardaí made about 14,000.

The facts speak for themselves . . .

Red Kev

gizmo555 wrote: »

^^^^ This!!!

Is allowing the state to continuously track our whereabouts a reasonable and proportionate solution to the problem of collecting tax?

So you're perfectly happy with a private company tracking every small detail of your life, (phone use, credit & debit card use, google searches, surfing history, online shopping & browsing etc. etc.) but you've an issue with Gardai trying to clamp down on tax, insurance and NCT cheats.

gizmo555

Red Kev wrote: »

So you're perfectly happy with a private company tracking every small detail of your life, (phone use, credit & debit card use, google searches, surfing history, online shopping & browsing etc. etc.)

When did I say that?

LIGHTNING wrote: »

While posting about it on Facebook

Don't have a Facebook account.

Martypants1

gizmo555 wrote: »

When did I say that?



Don't have a Facebook account.

email account?

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Another vote here to scrap the current road tax system and add similar costs/tax onto fuel.

The amount of foreign registered cars here is ridiculous ('visiting' my left ass cheek :rolleyes:). Adding the tax to the fuel would catch foreign registered cars for at least some sort of 'road tax' as well. The vignette system widely used in Europe requires enforcement, which would negate the additional revenue generated.

The more you use the roads the more tax you pay via your fuel consumption, the less you use the roads, the less you pay etc.

NickDunne

Sitec wrote: »

Depending on the tax rate the Hauliers would be up in arms.

No more trucks on the road...

No more food in shops.

No more goods in shops.

No more construction work.

The country would grind to a halt.

Obviously there would be a rebate system needed in place for goods vehicles and psv's.

The country wouldn't grind to a halt, haulage companies would just base their HQ in NI and register the trucks there like they've been doing for years.

gctest50

Sitec wrote: »

Depending on the tax rate the Hauliers would be up in arms.

No more trucks on the road...

No more food in shops.

No more goods in shops.

No more construction work.

The country would grind to a halt.

You could give Hauliers a cash back deal at the end of the year

- base it on GPS-enabled tachograph data submitted

CelticRambler

seamus wrote: »

I guess the one barrier standing in the way of this is that the motor tax system is the only real way of keeping track of ownership.
Without motor tax, loads more people will buy and sell vehicles without bothering to change over the ownership docs.

Don't know how you work that out. There's no annual motor tax here in France, and there's no problem with keeping track of ownership. The seller makes damn sure they declare the vehicle sold within 48 hours of the sale so they don't get any hassle if/when it's spotted speeding the next day.

gctest50

LIGHTNING wrote: »

For about the 200 time but why not one more time:

ITS ALREADY ON THE FUEL

GREAT - IT WORKS !!

mega - now ya just need to go here or somewhere :

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?maintable=SEI07&ProductID=DB_SEI&PLanguage=0

and work out how much more tax to put on it so you can relieve the burden from the windscreen

Nichard Dixon

NickDunne wrote: »

Obviously there would be a rebate system needed in place for goods vehicles and psv's.

The country wouldn't grind to a halt, haulage companies would just base their HQ in NI and register the trucks there like they've been doing for years.

No so, remember the proposal was to abolish motor tax, so you would have NI hauliers registering in the 26 counties. What you would have would be giant 20 pump filling stations in Jonesborough and Beleek, ensuring that nobody living north of Dublin to Galway would have to pay the higher fuel charge. You'd also have shadowy tankers driving the countryside from these to every part of the 26 counties so that any saving in enforcement from motor tax would be used up trying to detect this.

seamus

CelticRambler wrote: »

Don't know how you work that out. There's no annual motor tax here in France, and there's no problem with keeping track of ownership. The seller makes damn sure they declare the vehicle sold within 48 hours of the sale so they don't get any hassle if/when it's spotted speeding the next day.

Well I guess that's what I'm getting at with enforcement.

Even with our current system, there's an incredible amount of sellers and buyers who don't bother with the paperwork and only find out there's a problem when they get a speeding fine in the post six months after selling, or go to tax their car and suddenly realise they have no VLC for the car they bought a year ago.
Threads pop up on boards about this stuff all the time.

I'm sure the 95% would continue to do the paperwork just fine, but it's the 5% who are the continual problem, either out of laziness, ignorance or malice.

I don't know the system in France, maybe they do have an issue with the minority not bothering with the paperwork. Either way, just straight up eliminating motor tax in Ireland would give that 5% an easier out and create new loopholes for them to exploit.

So new enforcement mechanisms would have to be put in force to lock it down. I suspect the vast majority of people caught for these kinds of frauds are spotted first by the out of date tax disc on their windscreen.

CelticRambler

You get the lazy, ignorant and malicous in all countries, and they don't need an "out". How many cases come up before the courts where the driver has no insurance, or was already banned for driving?

These days, it should be a simple matter to couple ANPR to ownership and insurance data, and a seller to know that it was their responsibility to declare the vehicle sold. That could be done within minutes of the sale, and a comprehensive ANPR surveillance system would quickly pick up "irregular" vehicles.

CJhaughey

CelticRambler wrote: »

comprehensive ANPR surveillance system would quickly pick up "irregular" vehicles.

The UK can't do ANPR in all areas, how would this country manage with ANPR outside populated areas?
OK some on the major motorways and in cities might catch a few, but there are thousands of miles of roads where setting an ANPR camera up in a van or car would be a waste of time.

Special Circumstances

Anpr at all service stations... no fuel for you til you pay your dues!








But wait... the low tech way of doing that is just put it all on fuel! For ICE at least..

gizmo555

CelticRambler wrote: »

a comprehensive ANPR surveillance system would quickly pick up "irregular" vehicles.

:rolleyes:

The Garda has been forced to decommission a key element of a multimillion-euro road traffic enforcement system after it flagged almost every vehicle on the roads as driving without insurance. The issue has arisen with the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system which cost about €6 million.

It operates with cameras in Garda cars by reading the registration plates of vehicles. It then instantly cross-checks the vehicles for any possible infringement such as the cars’ insurance or tax being out of date, driver being banned or vehicles having been reported stolen . . . last year problems arose when the Garda’s system was continually flagging vehicles as uninsured. After further checks, it emerged the insurance policies on almost all the flagged vehicles were valid.


http://www.irishtimes.com/news/crime-and-law/garda-forced-to-pull-technology-that-detects-uninsured-drivers-1.2198863

Long Time Lurker

ironclaw wrote: »

I wouldn't call it a failure on the tax disc side, it's more an enforcement failure. I'm all for the scrapping here and ANPR to the hilt on every single major road and give GoSafe a contract as well for spot checks as well. Online and paperless tax would be a golden opportunity to allow people tax by the day, week or month so it's pretty favourable I think.

My arse. Guards and their back room staff are idiots.They can't manage a good shiote let alone a fully database reliant system. Plus how often do you hear of stories from the UK where people are wrongly left on the side of the road because of a muck up. Could you imagine our bunch of corrupt village idiots dealing with this only. Mess. Keep it transparent and in full view. These friend exonerating bunch of small country town tools would cause chaos if it was left to ANPR systems alone.

quadrifoglio verde

My fear of scrapping it and increasing it on fuel, is that the next time they want more of my money to spend in an inefficient way, they'll just reintroduce motor tax and screw the motorist even more.

gizmo555

quadrifoglio verde wrote: »

My fear of scrapping it and increasing it on fuel, is that the next time they want more of my money to spend in an inefficient way, they'll just reintroduce motor tax and screw the motorist even more.

Which is exactly what Fianna Fáil did in 1977

CiniO

gctest50 wrote: »

GREAT - IT WORKS !!

mega - now ya just need to go here or somewhere :

http://www.cso.ie/px/pxeirestat/Statire/SelectVarVal/Define.asp?maintable=SEI07&ProductID=DB_SEI&PLanguage=0

and work out how much more tax to put on it so you can relieve the burden from the windscreen

Why not just scrap the whole motortax all together, and fill the revenue shortage with some other tax which would affect everyone, not only vehicle owners?

hognef

gctest50 wrote: »

Just scrap it altogether and stick it on fuel - use the car less, pay less

the "mechanism" is already there for taxing fuel

simple wins

no motor tax offices

no motor tax website to be built & maintained

no keeping motor tax database in sync with apnr stuff

no fixing up errors in motor tax database

no more " my cat ate the tax disk " at checkpoints

no more hassle for those into old/classic cars - just take it out of the shed when the sun comes out

.

Tax those with long commutes until it no longer pays for them to work at all? Also consider that these people are already spending vast amounts of time stuck in traffic on congested roads.

Reduce tax on those who live close enough to work that they really should be walking or cycling? Give them even more incentives to drive and clog up the roads for those who really don't have other options (yes, those in the first paragraph)?

Force even more people to move to Dublin and other 'cities'? Furthet drive up the cost of homes in the cities?

Doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.