Declaration off road, motor tax and NCT

Long Time Lurker

I've always been annoyed by the fact that if you declare a vehicle off the road. and should that vehicle be taxed at the time of making the declaration, you'll still lose what ever tax is in the window at the time despite the fact that you've informed the same authority - that issues the tax disc in the first place - that the vehicle is not being used. Surely its simple enough to pause the tax and reissue a fresh disc once the declaration of non use period is up. Seems fair.

Secondly and as annoyingly, the same principle applies to an NCT. Here's a classic example of money for old rope Ireland at its best. If you NCT a car today (a 10 year or older car for example) you'll have a valid NCT for a year. Now here's the thing, if you declare it off the road, for nine months say, then you'll still be liable for a test three months after the car goes back on the road. This despite the fact that the car hasn't been used for most of that year. Now heres the even bigger pile of nonsense. Should you declare the car off the road for a year and a half then you'll be liable for a test straight away. Fine but they'll only issue you a cert for six months. I find that grossly unfair as the car has clearly not been in the road. You should be issued a full years cert.

Anyway that's my rant for this evening. Seems they want their cake and eat it and they're getting bit too. Good old Ireland.

kyogger

Election time is coming up

punisher5112

Re NCT its a good thing as a car sitting up for a year is not good at all and tyres perish among other defects could arise.
Frozen/seized callipers etc.....

If it is taxed for a year and you then declare off the road you should be able to reclaim a certain amount.

Lots of Irish road users from here or abroad can at times treat cars as a tool that just keeps going untill it falls apart and don't maintain them.

NCT is a good way to get dangerous cars off the road.

Long Time Lurker

kyogger wrote: »

Election time is coming up

Lol

Agricola

Some valid points OP. Be interesting to know though are there other jurisdictions where the powers that be bend over backwards to accomodate vehicle owners in this way when it comes to annual inspections / off the road declarations / tax owed etc. I would doubt it. Lets be honest, it's a huge cash cow, and the fact that we can tax quarterly and declare vehicle off the road at all is probably as good as it's going to get. A far more nonsensical aspect of the NCT is the liability of having to re-test the car when it's original registration date comes around, regardless of whether you might have got it tested 4 months previously. Can't see that changing either.

Ogogo

The one that bothers me is the requirement for an annual declaration for the "Off Road" RF150. I have an old car in my shed that I am taking my time restoring and every year I have to remember to declare it off road. If I forget or slip up by a month I have to tax it - even though right now it is a series of buckets of bolts. God alone knows how I would ever tax it until it is finished. Can I not declare it off the road until it is back on the road?

As I am on the subject, if you do all have any sway with any potential new minister for the environment - please encourage them to abolish this nonsense of tax discs, insurance discs, nct discs etc etc. If it keeps going there will be no point in me finishing my 2cv because I wont be able to see out the window with all the discs.

As for the election - I havent seen a single politician / canvaser yet, even if I did I wouldnt work myself up over something like this because I suspect its mostly in one ear out the other.

punisher5112

Ogogo wrote: »

The one that bothers me is the requirement for an annual declaration for the "Off Road" RF150. I have an old car in my shed that I am taking my time restoring and every year I have to remember to declare it off road. If I forget or slip up by a month I have to tax it - even though right now it is a series of buckets of bolts. God alone knows how I would ever tax it until it is finished. Can I not declare it off the road until it is back on the road?

As I am on the subject, if you do all have any sway with any potential new minister for the environment - please encourage them to abolish this nonsense of tax discs, insurance discs, nct discs etc etc. If it keeps going there will be no point in me finishing my 2cv because I wont be able to see out the window with all the discs.

As for the election - I havent seen a single politician / canvaser yet, even if I did I wouldnt work myself up over something like this because I suspect its mostly in one ear out the other.

It can be declared online no need for forms and set it up to remind through email.

Also you can always sell car and buy back no tax owed.

Ogogo

punisher5112 wrote: »

It can be declared online no need for forms and set it up to remind through email.

Also you can always sell car and buy back no tax owed.

I am doing that now - but I got no reminder / Pin after the first year this was to be renewed and was 2 days late submitting the form. Had to jump through all forms of hoops to get the situation normalised.

Just sayin I think its a little daft that I cant say hey my car is off the road and it will be for a long while to come.....

JohnBoy26

punisher5112 wrote: »

It can be declared online no need for forms and set it up to remind through email.

Also you can always sell car and buy back no tax owed.

I'm not sure if it's still the case but as of last year you could not re-declare a car off the road if the tax had expired more than 3 months before.

punisher5112

JohnBoy26 wrote: »

I'm not sure if it's still the case but as of last year you could not re-declare a car off the road if the tax had expired more than 3 months before.

You never could....

If you buy a motor you have 10days to declare of road.
If your car is taxed and ends 29feb you can declare off road on 29feb.

You can then choose up to 1year of road.

Once taxing it this is all void.

I get an email all the time letting me know when its close to time and for 1 vehicle I have off road it still comes in the post to give me the option.

JohnBoy26

punisher5112 wrote: »

You never could....

If you buy a motor you have 10days to declare of road.
If your car is taxed and ends 29feb you can declare off road on 29feb.

You can then choose up to 1year of road.

Once taxing it this is all void.

I get an email all the time letting me know when its close to time and for 1 vehicle I have off road it still comes in the post to give me the option.

Sorry That's not what I ment. I had my car declared off the road for 12 months and after the 12 months had elapsed I wanted to re-declare it off the road for a further 12 months but it couldn't be done online because the last tax disc expired more than 3 months before. I had to get it done in the motortax office.

punisher5112

JohnBoy26 wrote: »

Sorry That's not what I ment. I had my car declared off the road for 12 months and after the 12 months had elapsed I wanted to re-declare it off the road for a further 12 months but it couldn't be done online because the last tax disc expired more than 3 months before. I had to get it done in the motortax office.

Got ya....

It will let you know once declaration has not lapsed.

Example declaration expires 29feb I can declare off road but if 1stmarch then it either has to be taxed or just leave it and when you do want to drive sell it and buy it back(family or friend)

JohnBoy26

punisher5112 wrote: »

Got ya....

It will let you know once declaration has not lapsed.

Example declaration expires 29feb I can declare off road but if 1stmarch then it either has to be taxed or just leave it and when you do want to drive sell it and buy it back(family or friend)

The declaration had not lapsed. It was done within the time.

CiniO

OP all your points are valid.
There's more than that though.

1. NCT - form of it is very good, but there is a problem with availability and validity of certs (as you mentioned). Anyone should be able to do NCT on the spot without a need to prebook even if that means waiting in a short queue. Also NCT should be valid for 2 years (or 1 year) from date of the test, and not to some silly first registration anniversary. There also used to be a problem with a lack of ability to do test at any random time even when previous test is still valid, but this was sorted with introduction on voluntary early testing few years ago, so at least we are going in the right direction.

2. Motortax. First of all its rates are absolutly silly. It's mad to request people to pay such big money to be able to use their car - there's hardly any places in the world where taxing car would be so much expensive as here. Secondly there's unnecesserily so much gap between lowest and highest rates, with lowest rate being only 5% of the highest - which means that some cars are 20 times more expensive to tax than the others. This creates unnecessery influence on market value of cars. And in the end, I think it's silly anyway to put tax on vehicles, which in 21st century are more of a necessity, than luxury which they were 100 years ago when motortax was introduced. Most countries in the world, don't put tax on vehicles these days.

3. Insurance - the biggest issue for Irish motoring. Irish insurance market is a one big cartell, where insurers work together to rip off their customers. There is a lack of legislation to protect vehicle owners and to force insurers to offer reasonable service.
Insurers here can influence, who can drive, what car can they drive, where can they drive, what can they do with their car, etc... Fact that you need to disclose every fecking detail to them nearly including your shoe size, etc is just ridiculous. For anyone being even slightly out of ordinary office worker woring 9-5 and driving 1.2 corsa, prices very often are prohibitive. It's quite a precedense for the world scale, that Irish insurers can have so much influence on motoring. Nearly everywhere else insurance is just a formality, which you pay once a year and forget about it. Not in Ireland, where you have to check every single silly detail with insurers and beg them on your knees so they could let you go on holidays or tow your trailer, or carry a dog in your car, or other silly detail. Complete nuts situation which needs to looked at as soon as possible.

4. Driving licences - problems with issuing of the documents were sorted pretty much with introduction of NDLS centres, so there is no differencation anymore where some people were able to get their licence on the spot, while other in different motortax office had to wait for 4 months without their licence (when they were renewing or exchanging) effectively prohibiting those people to rent a car or drive abroad. Only issue to sort out is the limitation to renew licence only up to 3 months before it exprires, witout ablility to renew it at anytime someone wishes. Hope this will be fixed soon.

5. Lack of enforcement of traffic laws by Gardai. THere's very small chance of being fined for anything else than speeding. And because of that people don't bother obeying or very often even knowing rules of the road. This makes driving in Ireland fairly difficult as everyone is required to react adequately to errors of other drivers which are being committed permanently at all times. Situation will be slowly improving since obligatory training for new drivers with instructors was introduced 5 years ago or so, but still lack of enforcement needs to be dealt with.

6. Social acceptance for drink driving - that's another problem, which possibly was dealt with in bigger cities, but still exists and is fully alive on the countryside. This with lack of enforcement, meant that on Saturday evening, it would be hard to find a sober driver in some places of the country.

Beside above, driving in Ireland is quite pleasurable

moonlighting

My modern classic failed the nct. Needs a few small holes welded up underneath. Decided to put it in storage and declare it off-road. I hope to do a fix it up someday in the future when I have the money. Anyways I had almost a full years road-tax on it. I wanted a refund and they wouldn't give it to me. Only way to get a refund was to officially scrap the car, such scumbags.

savagethegoat

Yeah it's not a fair system.

The situation with a CVRT is worse, if the test is out by more than a year, they will only give a 6 month cert.

It ought to be about the vehicle being safe, not about Revenue collection. If it's tested it should get a cert for a year (or 2) irrespective of any other factor

Long Time Lurker

savagethegoat wrote: »

Yeah it's not a fair system.

The situation with a CVRT is worse, if the test is out by more than a year, they will only give a 6 month cert.

It ought to be about the vehicle being safe, not about Revenue collection. If it's tested it should get a cert for a year (or 2) irrespective of any other factor

Some really great responses there folks. And this one so succinctly sums it up. More often than not it's about getting the money, not when a vehicle was last tested or needs next testing or even any relevance to its safety. Its (testing) a revenue generator, maybe not first and foremost but its certainly part of the agenda rather than a by product.

As regards the taxation, the idea that you are forced to pay for something you're not using simply because you didnt fill out a form - yet in the same breath - you still end up potentially paying for something you're not using despite informing the same authorities, well that's simply theft in my eyes. If a cars off the road with a valid tax disc but you've declared the car not in use then why are you liable for tax!

bunnybaby7000

Hi... Maybe this question has been answered but I couldn't see it..

I have declared my car off road for a year, my NCT would be due in 6 months time... do I need to do the NCT test if the car if declared off road and I'm not in the country?

Cheensbo

No you don't need to test it, you only need to do it if you want to use the car on the road.

Renegade Mechanic

I've a car off the road. Trust me, you'd be amazed what deteriorates on yokes simply sitting still

I've done feck all, hardly 200 miles in the last few years, only looking at it it and in the last few months a driver window switch has disintegrated, heater fan has given up the ghost, two seat belts need unblocking and the rear wiper doesn't move

CiniO

Renegade Mechanic wrote: »

I've done feck all, hardly 200 miles in the last few years, only looking at it it and in the last few months a driver window switch has disintegrated, heater fan has given up the ghost, two seat belts need unblocking and the rear wiper doesn't move

Sounds like car is fit for scrap only