Since 1921, the vehicle tax disc has been an integral part of British life, whether you’ve liked it or not. However, now that it is being axed in favour of digital registration methods, what are the biggest revolutions motor traders­­­ will experience this October?

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The Effect On Motor Traders

Once the new systems for road tax have gone live, the biggest issue for motor traders will be that they don’t get caught out with fines for a car they are no longer in ownership of. The decrease in general levels of government administration is preferable, however places more pressure on the individual to make sure they are 100% compliant with the new rules. The biggest issue with this, however, is that there doesn’t seem to be a suitable level of awareness being generated to ensure all motor traders and dealers are prepared for the change.

Bringing about an end to the ‘For sale, taxed’ aspect of motor selling is, as the government advises, a way in which to reduce confusion about a vehicle’s tax status and in turn protect the buyer. On the other hand, bargain-hunters will miss out on big savings usually received through the existence of tax remainder on the vehicle.

Haggling over car tax at point of sale will come to an end, and having to immediately get their own will be an inconvenience to many buyers, but in the long run motor traders must understand the government’s incentive is to ensure no one is unknowingly at risk of driving an untaxed vehicle. An AA Populus poll in February 2014 showed that 70% of its members were worried about driving a friend’s, relative’s or recently bought car that may not be correctly taxed, and the new system is in place to quell these fears. The onus, however, is now on individuals to make sure they’ve read, re-read and understood the changes and what is going to happen in order to avoid the repercussions of a hefty fine.

What Are These New Changes? Do I Agree With Them?

There are two sides to every new amendment in the motor industry, some of which make life a lot easier for everyone and some that generally won’t go down too well at all. Below is a summary of the pros and cons of the tax disc upheaval and how they will affect you as a motorist.

Pros

According to the DVLA, abolishing the tax disc will save the taxpayer approximately £10 million every year, and environmentally it makes sense to transfer to a paperless process having already printed an astonishing 1.7 billion discs to date. Besides this, you won’t have to make that cumbersome trip to the post office every 6 months.

A big issue for the current payment system is that a 12-month upfront payment is usually too much for the average driver to fork out at once, leaving them to suffer the 10% surcharge to pay with a 6-month installment. The new online system will still offer the annual and biannual fee however will introduce an option for a monthly direct debit that charges only 5% extra, making it easier for the taxpayer and, according to a Treasury spokesman, makes ‘dealing with the government more hassle free.’

If you sell your car privately, the tax is no longer transferred to the new buyer, and you get a full refund for the months remaining on the disc. This is beneficial if you’ve just recently taxed the car and have had to sell it unexpectedly, meaning you won’t lose out on some extra cash.

Cons

On the flip side of this, if you are the buyer of a used car there is no longer an opportunity to benefit from a tax remainder from the previous owner. The DVLA requires buyers to make themselves fully aware of this rule so that they are prepared to acquire tax that is applicable from the day and hour they buy the vehicle. As well as this, the seller must immediately inform the DVLA of the change of ownership or SORN status through a V5C form or else face up to £1000 in fines.

Used car buyers will be put out by the lack of physical tax disc records, where having more records usually indicated a more diligent and careful owner. Although the digital enhancement of the system is beneficial in most ways, it will require more effort and insight to research the history of a second hand car.

The current level of road tax evasion is at its second lowest figure ever of 0.6%, and there is no evidence that this will rise without the physical presence of a tax disc. However, due to police instigating tools like the Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR), more focus will be placed on the use of cameras and surveillance. Drivers may feel slightly uncomfortable with this as this will undoubtedly result in more personal data being logged with the possibility of it being sold on.

Some motoring journalists such as Maria McCarthy aren’t at all happy with the thought of losing the 93-year-old tax disc; for her personally it acts as a ‘receipt,’ an old school record of where her money has gone. Although nostalgia may be the culprit for some of the discomfort caused by the new modifications, the influx of technological changes to apply modernity to our everyday systems doesn’t seem to be slowing down, especially in the motor industry; the cutting of administration costs is certainly not a bad thing, and shifting everyone into the technological age can only bring about more smart transformations in how the government manages its systems.

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