Petition to make VED renewal fairer

[motco]

Ladies and Gentlemen, please sign this - if you agree obviously:

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/70266

Thanks!

[pingu]

Reminder me, what's wrong with VED renewal? Apart from not getting a piece of paper, what has changed?

[motco]

You cannot pass unused VED to a new owner, you have to get a refund of all unused WHOLE months. The new owner has to apply before taking the vehicle and will pay back to the beginning of the month which, if it's late in any month, means HMG is getting paid twice for the month to date.

[robdalej]

Surely thats the same as it has always been, if you tax your car in the middle of the month then the road tax has always started from the first of that month,Also if you surrendered your tax you half way through the month then you would only get a refund from the following month. My understanding of the new tax rules are that if the car has previously been taxed and , providing you have insured it, then you have up to two weeks to retax it

[motco]

Yes it is similar, but you could pass the unused 1 to 30 days on to the new owner (or benefit from your seller passing them on to you on buying your replacement) but now you are compelled to surrender it. Your buyer, if it's on the last few days of the month, is made to buy from the beginning of that month before he even drives the car home. Therefore the government is being paid twice for a very significant amount of time which would not have happened before because you could pass on (or receive) the remaining days of that month on to the new owner. It's not a lot, but if you pay for an ///M tax disc it is quite a few pounds. It's yours, not theirs. The petition is not mine so I can say that it very well worded; have a look:-

Vehicle tax (Road Fund Licence) per day, not month

Responsible department: Department for Transport

Following the recent changes in vehicle tax, vehicle owners are now forced to surrender the value of the vehicle tax up until the end of the month in which they sell the vehicle.

Vehicle buyers are also forced to buy a full month, when they will not have had the use of the days preceding the vehicle purchase.

It is also the case that the computer systems which coordinate the purchase of vehicle tax are given a concentrated workload at the end of each month. This has recently resulted in the service being unavailable.

I propose that vehicle tax should be available daily so that buyers and sellers are not short-changed, and that the systems are more able to cope with a more uniform demand.

This petition is of interest to anyone in the UK who will either buy or sell a motor vehicle.

Please rectify this unfair practice.

[alec.m]

Signed, I agree, It makes buying a car more complicated. It was nice to have a few months tax left on your purchase. It`s a bit like some car parks next to beaches down here. The minimum time you can purchase is 2 hours and one that I frequent for an evening walk is locked at night so you have to buy 2 hours even though it shuts in half an hour and yes they do hand out tickets at that time.

[motco]

Signed, I agree, It makes buying a car more complicated. It was nice to have a few months tax left on your purchase. It`s a bit like some car parks next to beaches down here. The minimum time you can purchase is 2 hours and one that I frequent for an evening walk is locked at night so you have to buy 2 hours even though it shuts in half an hour and yes they do hand out tickets at that time.

Our local town centre car park now has ANPR cameras to register your arrival, and when you leave you have to buy a time-based ticket after entering your registration number into the ticket machine. I haven't used it yet so I don't know whether you get a ticket on entry or only on leaving. However, it probably yields no more revenue for the town council and costs more to maintain than the old pay and display system.

What happens if you tailgate a car ahead and don't get registered as arriving I cannot say...

[Ragtop]

I agree with you motco. If I buy a car now in the middle of the month, even if that car is taxed for that month by the seller, I would have to buy road tax from the start of that month before I could drive it on the road. Looks like a win win for the government. Just about to sign the petition.

[pingu]

I know all about the issues with VED transfer between owners, but what has that got to do with VED renewal?

In fact, renewal might even be easier as if you opt to pay by direct debit, you may not even need to renew at all. This has still to be confirmed.

[bertiejaffa]

I've signed - it is a full attempt by the government to get double tax from car sales. At the end of the day car tax should be abolished anyway and an extra 1-2p duty added to fuel, that way it would be fairer, the more you drive, the more tax you pay, unless you bought a hybrid obviously.. Thus this would force people into buying more fuel efficient cars etc etc etc....

....and before anyone says it, yes I know my M averages 17mpg so I'd be in the do-do, but it's the fairest way and wouldn't need the additional expense of cameras everywhere reading your number plate (although we know that they aren't just doing that for car tax purposes!)

[Vic-Z3]

Vehicle owners are now forced to surrender the value of the vehicle tax up until the end of the month in which they sell the vehicle.

Vehicle buyers are also forced to buy a full month, when they will not have had the use of the days preceding the vehicle purchase.

Purely on this point alone I have signed that partition ............................. Scammers.

[Davejue1]

I've signed - it is a full attempt by the government to get double tax from car sales. At the end of the day car tax should be abolished anyway and an extra 1-2p duty added to fuel, that way it would be fairer, the more you drive, the more tax you pay, unless you bought a hybrid obviously.. Thus this would force people into buying more fuel efficient cars etc etc etc....

....and before anyone says it, yes I know my M averages 17mpg so I'd be in the do-do, but it's the fairest way and wouldn't need the additional expense of cameras everywhere reading your number plate (although we know that they aren't just doing that for car tax purposes!)

Absolutely bang on the nose Bertie! Couldn't agree more.

[pingu]

... car tax should be abolished anyway and an extra 1-2p duty added to fuel...

It would then become a tax on usage, instead of a tax on ownership.

It's not a very well thought-out tax, or it's well thought-out and poorly explained. Reminds me of student loan scheme - if you use the rules to your advantage, you are quids in .

Anyway, no need for me to sign as the loss of a few days' tax when I sell a car (which I might do once or twice a decade) is more than offset by the savings made out of SORN.

[pingu]

The petition is not mine so I can say that it very well worded; have a look:-

Vehicle tax (Road Fund Licence) per day, not month

Responsible department: Department for Transport

Following the recent changes in vehicle tax, vehicle owners are now forced to surrender the value of the vehicle tax up until the end of the month in which they sell the vehicle.

Vehicle buyers are also forced to buy a full month, when they will not have had the use of the days preceding the vehicle purchase.

It is also the case that the computer systems which coordinate the purchase of vehicle tax are given a concentrated workload at the end of each month. This has recently resulted in the service being unavailable.

I propose that vehicle tax should be available daily so that buyers and sellers are not short-changed, and that the systems are more able to cope with a more uniform demand.

This petition is of interest to anyone in the UK who will either buy or sell a motor vehicle.

Please rectify this unfair practice.

I have to disagree with you about the wording.

It's not vehicle tax, nor is it Road Fund Licence. It is Vehicle Excise Duty. To get this fundamental part of the petition wrong indicates a poorly considered argument.

I acknowledge that there are problems with the new scheme regarding the loss of days when selling/buying a car, but how many times do you buy or sell a car? In the worst case scenario, each time you swap cars you will have to pay for an extra two months' VED. For example, if you own a car for 24 months, you will have to pay for 26 months. It will affect you more if you buy and sell a large number of cars, or you change your car frequently. Personally, I keep my cars for quite a long time and I SORN them when I don't want to use them, so the effect on me will be minimal.

The ability to tax online and not need to wait for the piece of paper is great. If my car is SORN'd and I decide that I want to drive it, I can pay online and be on-the-road in 10 minutes. I can re-SORN it when I get back home. So, for the price of less than half a tank of fuel, I can do what I want on a daily basis (and I get free use of the car for the remainder of the month).

Having said that, the petition ...

I propose that vehicle tax should be available daily so that buyers and sellers are not short-changed, and that the systems are more able to cope with a more uniform demand.

asks for the "tax" to be available daily. It is already available daily.

The petitioner makes comments about one problem with the "tax", yet asks you to sign a petition about something totally different. In fact, as I showed in para 4, the petition is asking for something that you already have.

[akirk]

I didn't think tax was available daily...
do you not have to buy it in month chunks?
i.e. if your tax was £365 per year - could you go online pay £1 and have tax for one day? or buy a year, but then in reclaiming the remainder effectively pay £1 / £1xdays required?
I don't think you can - if you want to tax your car today (as I just have) then you are told that the tax runs from October 1st - if I cancelled it tomorrow, then I would expect only to get a refund from November the 1st - so there is a minimum cost of a month - i.e. it is charged monthly...
(in fact my tax was free as it is a classic - but still )

Alasdair

[pingu]

You are quite correct that the cost of buying one day's "tax" is 1/12th of the annual cost, but you CAN buy it on one day and cancel it on the next. My point is that the petition is very poorly worded, and that you can currently do what the petitioner is petitioning for.

If the charge was daily, you don't really think it would be 1/365ths of the current annual charge, do you? The best that I would expect is 1/300th.

[motco]

You are quite correct that the cost of buying one day's "tax" is 1/12th of the annual cost, but you CAN buy it on one day and cancel it on the next. My point is that the petition is very poorly worded, and that you can currently do what the petitioner is petitioning for.

If the charge was daily, you don't really think it would be 1/365ths of the current annual charge, do you? The best that I would expect is 1/300th.

Buy it one day, cancel it the next and wave goodbye to 1/12th of the annual charge. Under the proposed regime (easily set-up with computers) you would pay only for the number of whole days the tax ran for. You could save 30/365ths of the cost and pay only for 1/365th in a 31 day month. As for what it's called: VED, road tax, road fund licence; that's a red herring, it's only the charging regime we're bitching about.

[gookah]

They have said that this change and the revenue it generates is passed on to us by making it less expensive for us to tax either monthly or 6monthly, as they now only put on a 5% surcharge rather than the previous 10%.
That, for me, makes up for it.

Plus
If i sold my car in the middle of the month I would pay double tax at an extra cost of approx £20
But I have saved £11.50 on my 6 monthly taxing as compared to before.
So unless I changed my car more frequently than every 21 months, and always did that partway through the month, both of which is unlikely, then I am quids in.

However I would just sorn/sell my car on the last day of the month and ask the buyer to collect and tax it the next day. no issues then and even more quids in.
So whats all the fuss about?

[motco]

Fair enough Gookah, don't sign if you don't feel strongly about it. Others do and that's their choice too - good to live in a country where you don't get a knock on the door at 2am if you dissent!

Okay, so they don't take any notice either, but it does vent one's spleen...

[akirk]

If the charge was daily, you don't really think it would be 1/365ths of the current annual charge, do you? The best that I would expect is 1/300th.

That would do!

Alasdair

[Alfie]

However it works out for the individual (or however the individual chooses to play the system), the point is that the taxman now receives DOUBLE the month's tax every time any vehicle changes ownership, raking in many £millions that is not his to claim.

This was not the case under the previous system and is blatantly unfair.
'Rip-off Britain' at its finest.

Pingu has quite rightly picked holes in the wording of the petition, but the intention of it is of significant importance to every vehicle owner and every taxpayer.

A.

[BimBeema]

Signed!