Speed cameras to detect Road tax infringements.

4ensic15

What is this nonsense about. It is known what vehicles are not taxed already. If tax is not renewed and the vehicle has not been declared off the road, destroyed or exported, then it must have no tax. Why are offenders not pursued on failure to renew? What would speed cameras tell that is not already known anyway?
This whole nonsense seems to be an attempt to get a contract and a distraction from the obvious failure to pursue offenders with the existing information.
I would suspect that the is another information gathering agenda at work here.
The Data protection office should demand an explanation at the least. Why should law abiding people have any more data gathered on them.

Peregrinus

4ensic15 wrote: »

What is this nonsense about. It is known what vehicles are not taxed already. If tax is not renewed and the vehicle has not been declared off the road, destroyed or exported, then it must have no tax . . .

But no offence is committed unless the untaxed vehicle is used on the public road. So the guards can camp outside your house, waiting for you to drive out the gateway, and then prosecute you for not having tax. Or they can produce photographs from speed cameras showing that, on this day, at this time, in this place, the vehicle was being driven on the public road. The second way is obviously a lot easier and cheaper.

Victor

There are hundreds of thousands of vehicles for which there is no certificate of destruction.

Casati

Sounds like a great idea. It would make me ensure I always had a valid tax disk

irishgeo

Garda cars should be able to do it too.

cml387

Surely a car either is taxed, or is off the road and therefore must be sorned?

Peregrinus

The offence is not owning an untaxed vehicle; it's driving it (in a public place), or allowing it to be driven. If the guards are going to prosecute you, they have to prove the car is being driven.

Esel

Peregrinus wrote: »

The offence is not owning an untaxed vehicle; it's driving it (in a public place), or allowing it to be driven. If the guards are going to prosecute you, they have to prove the car is being driven.

You forgot about parking in a public place.

Squiggle

Scrap motor tax altogether and replace the revenue with higher taxes on petrol and diesel. No evasion of tax and those who drive more pay more.

papu

Squiggle wrote: »

Scrap road tax altogether and replace the revenue with higher taxes on petrol and diesel. No avoidance of tax and those who drive more pay more.

Road tax does not exist, it's motor tax.

#ninjaedit

Still applies to the thread title.

lifeandtimes

Squiggle wrote: »

Scrap motor tax altogether and replace the revenue with higher taxes on petrol and diesel. No avoidance of tax and those who drive more pay more.

This is a fantastic ìdea that iv been saying for years. Means people who uae the road more pay for the privilege

Op it's not an offence to not have a taxed car,declared off road or not, if everyone who didbt renew or declared off road in time was to be decided as driving with out tax the place would collapse, a crime has to be commuted and that means an untaxed car needs to be driven.

It would seem that with this in place the discretionary rule of a months leway out of tax will be removed

schemingbohemia

Putting motor tax onto fuel would mess up our inflation with added increases on wages etc, never going to happen unless it's a EU wide decision.

jimmycrackcorm

lifeandtimes wrote:

It would seem that with this in place the discretionary rule of a months leway out of tax will be removed

I think that discretion disappeared a long time ago.

Claw Hammer

Peregrinus wrote: »

But no offence is committed unless the untaxed vehicle is used on the public road. So the guards can camp outside your house, waiting for you to drive out the gateway, and then prosecute you for not having tax. Or they can produce photographs from speed cameras showing that, on this day, at this time, in this place, the vehicle was being driven on the public road. The second way is obviously a lot easier and cheaper.

The guards can have FCPNs sent out all day and serve summons all day. It will cost more than they can collect to do this. They can call around when they know the car is being driven and take it away. This will bring in the money far mpore effectively. Cars now have tpo be declared off the road in advance, so it cannot be supposed that a car which is not written off and not declared off the road is sitting on private property 24 hours a day and the owner doesn't mind paying the arrears of tax to get it back on the road again.

ohnonotgmail

Claw Hammer wrote: »

The guards can have FCPNs sent out all day and serve summons all day. It will cost more than they can collect to do this. They can call around when they know the car is being driven and take it away. This will bring in the money far mpore effectively. Cars now have tpo be declared off the road in advance, so it cannot be supposed that a car which is not written off and not declared off the road is sitting on private property 24 hours a day and the owner doesn't mind paying the arrears of tax to get it back on the road again.

Not relevant. the car has to be untaxed on a public road for an offence to be committed.

Squiggle

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Putting motor tax onto fuel would mess up our inflation

It wouldn't as the weighting for " Operation of transport equipment", included in the calculation of the CPI which includes petrol, diesel and motor tax wouldn't change if motor tax was scrapped and the equivalent revenue was raised from petrol and diesel.

Esel

lifeandtimes wrote: »

This is a fantastic ìdea that iv been saying for years. Means people who uae the road more pay for the privilege

Op it's not an offence to not have a taxed car,declared off road or not, if everyone who didbt renew or declared off road in time was to be decided as driving with out tax the place would collapse, a crime has to be commuted and that means an untaxed car needs to be driven.

It would seem that with this in place the discretionary rule of a months leway out of tax will be removed

You too are forgetting about parking in a public place.

Victor

Esel wrote: »

You forgot about parking in a public place.

Parking is part of driving. How do you think it ended up in a public place?

schemingbohemia wrote: »

Putting motor tax onto fuel would mess up our inflation with added increases on wages etc, never going to happen unless it's a EU wide decision.

No. The inflation 'basket' currently includes both motor tax and fuel excise, so there would be no change.

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Not relevant. the car has to be untaxed on a public road for an offence to be committed.

I understand there have been changes such that vehicles now need to be declared 'off the road', as in the UK.

Claw Hammer

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

Not relevant. the car has to be untaxed on a public road for an offence to be committed.

Do you seriously think that the country has hundreds of thousands of people who keep a car of the public road, do not declare it off the road to save tax and are going to have it towed away when they are finished with it. If the guards know the address they can often see if there is off street parking.

ohnonotgmail

Victor wrote: »

Parking is part of driving. How do you think it ended up in a public place?

No. The inflation 'basket' currently includes both motor tax and fuel excise, so there would be no change.

I understand there have been changes such that vehicles now need to be declared 'off the road', as in the UK.

that is to prevent people from subsequently claiming that a vehicle was off the road to avoid tax. there is no penalty for not declaring a vehicle off the road, except the owner continues to be liable for the tax.

nice_guy80

Put the tax onto price of fuel

Problem solved.
Those who use the roads more pay more.

ohnonotgmail

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Do you seriously think that the country has hundreds of thousands of people who keep a car of the public road, do not declare it off the road to save tax and are going to have it towed away when they are finished with it. If the guards know the address they can often see if there is off street parking.

there is no requirement to declare a car off the road.

Claw Hammer

Putting the tax onto fuel means that business drivers who do the most mileage would pay more. That would force up the price of of other goods and services since sales reps and delivery drivers etc would have higher overheads. A very bad idea IMO.

Claw Hammer

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

that is to prevent people from subsequently claiming that a vehicle was off the road to avoid tax. there is no penalty for not declaring a vehicle off the road, except the owner continues to be liable for the tax.

Yes and what ididot is going to keep a car off the road and not declare it, leaving herself open to a tax bill? If the tax is not renewed and the car not declared off the road, it is a certainty that the car is being driven on the roads. Such cars should be identified and confiscated.

ohnonotgmail

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Yes and what ididot is going to keep a car off the road and not declare it, leaving herself open to a tax bill? If the tax is not renewed and the car not declared off the road, it is a certainty that the car is being driven on the roads. Such cars should be identified and confiscated.

and yet the law says that the vehicle must be found on a public road before an offence is committed. Perhaps you should lobby your TD to have the law changed.

Claw Hammer

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

and yet the law says that the vehicle must be found on a public road before an offence is committed. Perhaps you should lobby your TD to have the law changed.

No need to. If the car is being used the guards should be able to spot it. It might help if guards called to the house and pointed out to the owner that the tax has expired and to warn the owner that the car will be seized if it is found on the public road without being taxed.

ohnonotgmail

Claw Hammer wrote: »

No need to. If the car is being used the guards should be able to spot it. It might help if guards called to the house and pointed out to the owner that the tax has expired and to warn the owner that the car will be seized if it is found on the public road without being taxed.

you want the guards to call to the house of every vehicle that has expired tax? what a monumental waste of police resources. Let the speed cameras and anpr catch them instead.

Claw Hammer

ohnonotgmail wrote: »

you want the guards to call to the house of every vehicle that has expired tax? what a monumental waste of police resources. Let the speed cameras and anpr catch them instead.

The people are already caught. The guards will still have to call around with summonses etc. Any car more than 6 months out of tax should be investigated and seized. At the moment people take their chances. If they knew there might be a knock on the door they would chance it.

ohnonotgmail

Claw Hammer wrote: »

The people are already caught. The guards will still have to call around with summonses etc. Any car more than 6 months out of tax should be investigated and seized. At the moment people take their chances. If they knew there might be a knock on the door they would chance it.

how are they caught? they are not caught until they are found on a public road. you seem to keep forgetting that so i'll leave it there.

Pataman

Claw Hammer wrote: »

The people are already caught. The guards will still have to call around with summonses etc. Any car more than 6 months out of tax should be investigated and seized. At the moment people take their chances. If they knew there might be a knock on the door they would chance it.

Bull. My elderly mothers car was in her driveway for 5 years and never moved. She couldnt drive it anymore and wasnt able to sell it. She would be committing an offence if you had your way! Why should the car be seized? If its on private property, no offence has been committed.
Look at the cars in fields around the country. You want the gardai to start calling to these people?
There arent enought to successfully police the phone laws with out wasing their time calling to houses about car tax.

Peregrinus

Claw Hammer wrote: »

No need to. If the car is being used the guards should be able to spot it . . . .

And an easy way to spot it is to pick it up on a speed cam. So much less labour-intensive than having the guards camping outside your house waiting for you to drive the car through the gate.

K.Flyer

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Putting the tax onto fuel means that business drivers who do the most mileage would pay more. That would force up the price of of other goods and services since sales reps and delivery drivers etc would have higher overheads. A very bad idea IMO.

Not necessarily a bad idea.
In my own situation I have both a commercial vehicle and a private car.
A few years ago someone worked out a guidline figure to add to fuel to cover the road tax revenue.
Based on milage I calculated that my car "road tax" would drop by about two thirds, but the van would increase by about the same.
Overall, I was slightly worse off, but I felt then, as I have always done, that it was a much fairer way.
Think of all the Garda man hours saved by not needing to stop cars for tax, (or calling around to houses telling them if they drive the car they are committing an offence ) if its rolling, its taxed end off story.
If it works fine in Australia, why can't it work here.

CIARAN_BOYLE

K.Flyer wrote: »

If it works fine in Australia, why can't it work here.

Probably because it will make our petrol more expensive than ni petrol and border residents can go over the border for cheaper tax.

K.Flyer

CIARAN_BOYLE wrote: »

Probably because it will make our petrol more expensive than ni petrol and border residents can go over the border for cheaper tax.

How much would the difference be and how many would actually bother given that they would probably burn the difference driving there and back.
Last time I was in Newry fuel was a more expensive there than here anyway.
Would we not also benefit from non Irish vehicles entering Ireland for whatever reasons having to buy fuel while here.

cormie

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Putting the tax onto fuel means that business drivers who do the most mileage would pay more. That would force up the price of of other goods and services since sales reps and delivery drivers etc would have higher overheads. A very bad idea IMO.

Unless there was a way to claim a big chunk of it back if you were a legitimate business. I pay more tax on my 1.4 private car than I do on any of my commercial vans, but so would all those rogue "man with a van" operators and they can always undercut those of us operating within the law with the right insurance etc.

If the tax was on fuel and legitimate operators could claim it back with their VAT (and those under the VAT threshold but operating legally could claim it back too somehow), then this could also cut down on the amount of illegal operators if they have higher costs until they go legit.

Peregrinus

Business that buy fuel can already deduct the cost of the fuel in computing their profits and, therefore, their tax. It's treated the same as any other business expense. If they have to spend more buying fuel (because the cost rises due to the imposition of a fuel tax rather than a vehicle tax) they'll get a correspondingly bigger deduction. So I think that's already covered.

cormie

Maybe, I'm pretty bad when it comes to all that tax and accountancy stuff, but that could only be accounted for/claimed once a year, right? So if a small business is doing huge mileage and paying €5,000 extra on tax a year instead of the €333, this is going to have a huge effect on their cash flow.

Peregrinus

I dunno. What kind of turnover must the business have if they're doing so much driving about that their fuel bill goes up by €5,000?

K.Flyer

You can claim back the vat on diesel every two months if you are filing bi-monthly vat returns, overall fuel costs are claimed as a deductible cost with your annual returns.

Claw Hammer

Peregrinus wrote: »

And an easy way to spot it is to pick it up on a speed cam. So much less labour-intensive than having the guards camping outside your house waiting for you to drive the car through the gate.

Big deal. It is seen on a speeding camera. A fixed charge notice must issue. It is not paid, a summons must issue. The guard must turn up in court and if there is no one there may be ordered to make a personal service. It is far more labour-intensive. It is far simpler and tax has expired by more than a few months to go to the place where the vehicle is and if on the public road, take it immediately. If it is not in the public road at that time, a suitable opportunity can be awaited. In any event the owner can be asked if he wishes to declare it off the road and warned that it may be seized if it is found in the road subsequently, not having been declared off the road.

That is what will produce the maximum yield with the least use of labour

Claw Hammer

Pataman wrote: »

Bull. My elderly mothers car was in her driveway for 5 years and never moved. She couldnt drive it anymore and wasnt able to sell it. She would be committing an offence if you had your way! Why should the car be seized? If its on private property, no offence has been committed.
Look at the cars in fields around the country. You want the gardai to start calling to these people?
There arent enought to successfully police the phone laws with out wasing their time calling to houses about car tax.

Did she declare it off the road? If she did problem solved. What happened after 5 years?

BlinkingLights

I don't mean to be too negative here but, the Gardai operating a computerised database that would automatically generate fines if you weren't taxed... I can't see anything possibly going wrong there.

PULSE is incredibly reliable.

Perhaps we should iron out any technical glitches before we look at aromatic fines for untaxed vehicles.

K.Flyer

And the Garda don't have more important things to be doing than going around knocking on peoples doors telling them if they use the vehicle, or leave it on a public road, it will be seized.
People get two reminder letters for their road tax, that should be enough instead of wasting Garda time going around knocking on doors.

Claw Hammer

K.Flyer wrote: »

And the Garda don't have more important things to be doing than going around knocking on peoples doors telling them if they use the vehicle, or leave it on a public road, it will be seized.
People get two reminder letters for their road tax, that should be enough instead of wasting Garda time going around knocking on doors.

Reminders don't bring in the money. Visits and seizures do.

K.Flyer

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Reminders don't bring in the money. Visits and seizures do.

Put it on the fuel, end of the problem.

Claw Hammer

K.Flyer wrote: »

Put it on the fuel, end of the problem.

Add to inflation, cause another problem. When road tax was abolished before and moved to central taxation, it soon crept back. There was higher central taxation and road tax.

K.Flyer

Claw Hammer wrote: »

Add to inflation, cause another problem. When road tax was abolished before and moved to central taxation, it soon crept back. There was higher central taxation and road tax.

But on fuel would not be the same as before, this would be akin to "pay as you go".
I don't buy the inflation argument as a lot of households would most likely would see a drop due to the lower usage of their private car by comparison to a commercial vehicle.
The increase on commercial or high milage users would balance this back, so I don't think it wouldmake a huge difference to inflation, but at least everyone is compliant and no need to waste precious Garda resources checking motor tax or persuing people at their homes.

filbert the fox

I'm glad that this subject is aired and needs resolution.


I regularly see vehicles parked in the city of Dublin with out of date tax, no NCT and absence of insurance disc.

I looked up the Garda website this morning and can't see how to report them.

Any ideas?

Casati

filbert the fox wrote: »

I'm glad that this subject is aired and needs resolution.


I regularly see vehicles parked in the city of Dublin with out of date tax, no NCT and absence of insurance disc.

I looked up the Garda website this morning and can't see how to report them.

Any ideas?

I think you can contact Dublin City Council directly

filbert the fox

Casati wrote: »

I think you can contact Dublin City Council directly

Is it not a Garda matter exclusively?

DCC collect the tax - don't think there are traffic/tax wardens in the organisation

cormie

K.Flyer wrote: »

You can claim back the vat on diesel every two months if you are filing bi-monthly vat returns, overall fuel costs are claimed as a deductible cost with your annual returns.

Yep, that's the case with it being VAT alright and it's at 23%, I was thinking there might be another TAX on the fuel that can't be claimed as VAT, but migt have to be claimed against the TAX return which is annually, but I guess, it could just be done as VAT anyway, so instead of 23% VAT on fuel, make it higher on fuel. That would make it pretty easy actually. Foreign businesses could then reclaim the VAT too.