Abolish Tax Discs?

[The Spartan]

Someone once parked a car halfway across my drive and I had no idea who it was as I had never seen the car before and the neighbours didn't know whose car it was. I noticed it had no tax disc and rang the local authority and the next they came out and slapped a big orange ticket on the windscreen saying it would be towed and crushed in 5 days. Suffice to say I never saw the car again

[Paddy]

Hi,

Apart from the fact that the case could be better presented, I think this is an excellent proposition and I am at a loss as to why it has so few signatures.

Abolish paper-based car tax disc - e-petitions

£90M is spent by the government administering tax discs (source BVRLA), not to mention the administrative costs to companies and individuals. The revenue currently generated could be obtained from a rise in fuel duty thus saving the tax payer the £90M.

If you agree, please sign the petition.

Cheers,

Al.

I disagree. The tax disk should be compulsory for all vehicles including foreign ones. It pisses me off driving through Europe and have to buy a tax disc for Switzerland, Czech Republic, Austria, Bulgaria motorway tolls in France, Spain Italy etc

[ZARDOZ]

Be careful what you wish for. Petitioning for the scrapping of one tax in favour of the increase in another is never a good idea.

[Scoobos]

No!

I have a new tax disk holder and I wanna use it!

Best thing posted by Malcolm this week - I bought one of these .

[VectraMan]

The tax disc is a visible symbol that you have (or had at the time or buying it anyway) valid insurance. Slightly reduces the number of uninsured drivers perhaps.

So why not display an insurance badge? That'd be more useful in cracking down uninsured drivers.

[al_cam]

Gosh, I am surprised.

My point was that £90M is wasted just administering the discs and that this is unnecessary, not to mention the time wasted by companies and individuals.

Apart from assisting local busybodys, the disc is really no longer required. The police cars scan number plates and know whether you have MOT, insurance or tax. My wife often gets pulled over as her company car is insured via a company group policy and the system can't deal with that. I even saw one of those police, camera, action type programmes where the cop turned off the system because it was going off so often.

Lukemg spotted the obvious - just do away with the disc and keep the tax (+ve rep coming your way), will save some money but not the full £90M.
I also like Vectraman's suggestion (more +ve rep) to display insurance (and why not MOT?) details instead of a tax disk - the insurance/MOT companies could print a small tear out part for the purpose as part of your normal documents, or MOT places could check your insurance as part of the MOT test.

Perhaps to make it more palateable (i.e. hide it), they could make the changes in lieu of an increase in fuel duty.
Yes, high mileage drivers would pay more, but most would be better off, and foreign registered vehicle would pay their fair share.

Sorted - now get voting!

[vetran]

£90m wouldn't pay for the usual suspects to even talk about abolishing it. Crapita, Accidenta etc would charge that much to agree to bid, lets call it a management charge. Tax disks are one of the few systems that work smoothly and with the online service its pretty painless.

New cars right or wrong (I personally think its wrong) aren't subject to MOT for a few years, third parties validating insurance / collecting tax, hmm we all know how well that works, all expensive cars would be registered in Bermuda or the BV isles within a year.

Friend of ours had paid for insurance but the insurance company mucked up updating the database, if it hadn't been for a valid tax disk she and her young daughter would have been down the police station facing charges based on the insurers incompetence, but they had validated insurance for tax renewal.

As to local busybodies checking it being a hindrance, we used to live half a mile from the motorway, when scrap wasn't worth much we had weekly illegal deliveries of 10 year+ old cars. The only way we could get the council or police to take an interest was to prove they had an invalid tax disk, otherwise they just ignored it until it was torched, its not an offence to park a 12 year old car in a residential street they always told me. Once you remove the tax disk, calls to the police will go up assuming its untaxed.

combining MOT, tax & insurance might be a wise idea, but do I really want people to know who I insure with or where and when I get my MOT?

[IR35FanClub]

Because people think that fuel duty is high enough so if someone suggest raising it and the expense of lowering something else it will still be slapped down. Also if you ask the police they will say no to the idea as the number of cars they stop on the pretense of not having a tax disc (even though its not a criminal matter), then finding out other more serious offenses like no insurance or MOT

They don't read you tax disc now to see if you are taxed. Its all done via automatic number plate recognition. Any chump can think they are clever photoshopping a scan their mates tax disc, until they get pulled over. And busted for having no tax or insurance. At least abandoning the tax disc itself would mean it's one thing they can't avoid paying for, would free up the courts to deal with proper criminal and we could still pull over cars for having no insurance.

As for adding it on to duty - I'd support that. Why should I pay £450 a year for my porsche when I only use it 2,000 miles for a bit of weekend cruising. I commute to my clients via train in 1st class. My next door neighbour does 20,000 miles as a mobile beautician in her clio and pays only £25. I do 40 wheelie bins of CO2 a year and she fills several dozen bin lorries. So yes - definitely stick the eco tax on the fuel - not the car! In fact -if you got rid of the ecoband tax - I'd go round buying up old high performance cars and drive them 1 day a year each - which would stop someone else driving them in the mean time.

[Freamon]

£90m wouldn't pay for the usual suspects to even talk about abolishing it. Crapita, Accidenta etc* would charge that much to agree to bid, lets call it a management charge. Tax disks are one of the few systems that work smoothly and with the online service its pretty painless.

*Still** IBM on the vehicle registration side: DVLA renews IBM deal, six months after tax disc fiasco - ComputerworldUK.com

**They just lost the driver side to Gemalto: IBM loses DVLA contract to Gemalto - ComputerworldUK.com

[BolshieBastard]

*Still** IBM on the vehicle registration side: DVLA renews IBM deal, six months after tax disc fiasco - ComputerworldUK.com

**They just lost the driver side to Gemalto: IBM loses DVLA contract to Gemalto - ComputerworldUK.com

Given Gemalto physically produce a lot of credit \ debit cards, Im surprised they didnt have the contract in the first place!