Car Tax Changes - Are You Ready?
From next week on the 1st October, paper tax discs will start to become a relic of the past. The official stand is that they are obsolete. There is nothing stopping you though from displaying your outdated disc. There are even reports that car tax discs could become a collectable item in their own right. These people are known as velologists, where tax discs change hands for big sums of money, in some cases up to a £1,000.
The unfortunate news is that with this new change coming into effect you will still need to opay for your vehicle excise duty. The difference is that the DVLA will have all UK vehicles on its database so they can easily be checked without an actual physical inspection taking place.
You can still go to your local post office to renew your tax, or do it online or even over the phone, just like you used to be able to. One of the biggest changes which has been a very welcome change is that from 1st November you can setup a direct debit for your annual car tax, just like your car insurance. If however you have already paid for your tax this year, then you will have to wait for that to naturally expire, unless you change your vehicle before you can setup a direct debit.
One of the big questions we hear a lot here at The Insurance Factory is “What if I sell my car?”
From 1st October you are obliged to notify the DVLA, who will in turn refund you in full any monies owed from the remaining vehicle tax left on your vehicle. The big thing to be aware of here is that car tax is not going to be a transferrable medium anymore; the onus is now on the owner of the vehicle rather than the vehicle itself.
There will be £80 fines for drivers that are caught driving without tax on their vehicle. If you pay within 28 days then then this amount is then halved, much like car parking fine tickets received from local authorities.
There are some complaints from the motoring community regarding the new changes. The RAC conducted a survey and found that only 36% of participants in a poll of 2,000 people even knew about the upcoming changes. Marketing has been reported to have been somewhat weak in pushing the new changes.