End of paper tax discs in October 2014 - update from the FBHVC on 20th August 2014

See our last NEWS item on the update provided by the FBHVC newsletter in June 2014. More

See our earlier NEWS item on paper tax discs. More












Motorists cut up over DIY road tax discs until October 2014
News today that the "DVLA is having to print a stop-gap supply of tax discs in-house and on normal paper as it will soon run out of the special perforated paper it has used" was seen in the Motoring section of the UK's newspaper, the Daily Telegraph. The brief news item goes on to mention "Edmund King, President of the AA, said it is ironic that after years of trying to deter fake or bogus tax discs, the DVLA now has to produce its own "fake" discs as they have run out!" Saturday 30th August 2014

Updated: 140830
Posted: 140820
Discontinuance of the Tax Disc in October 2014
The end of paper tax discs was announced in the last Budget since when the Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs (FBHVC) has been seeking clarifications from DVLA on a number of concerns. In its newsletter in June 2014 the FBHVC report ended by saying "so far DVLA have not explained how, if at all, these problems are to be dealt with. The Federation will keep asking".

The FBHVC advised in its last newsletter of concerns with the arrangements proposed to enable the UK dispense with tax discs. The FBHVC has now heard from DVLA, who are not convinced of the validity of these concerns. The DVLA website contains a section dealing with what they propose to
do in October 2014. DVLA website

This issue goes well beyond historic vehicles. To remind everyone, the FBHVC's particular worry is that when a vehicle is sold the licence will have to be surrendered by the seller and a new licence obtained by the purchaser. This is to apply even where the vehicle is VED exempt. A major flaw is that time of the change is to be when DVLA receives the V5C, something which neither seller nor buyer will know precisely. No one has explained how buyers and sellers are supposed to deal with vehicle insurance in this case, nor how buyers will know when or how they can apply for tax when the records will show another keeper.

In the latest FBHVC newsletter they say "we have not pointed out, but it is the case, that someone selling a vehicle privately can hardly give up the licence before sale, because to do so without the vehicle being regarded as ready for scrapping, he or she would have to do a SORN declaration. This would prevent the buyer from having a trial run or taking the vehicle away. As DVLA had not responded to us at the time of our last meeting with the All Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Group, and so we raised this with the Group. They were conscious of the fact that the effect of what we had raised extends well outside our historic vehicle interests and they promised to ask that the matter be looked into. DVLA latest response says they are setting up an on-line method of advising of the sale, which would clearly help with the issue of uncertainty. It is not yet clear to us how the proposal would deal with the three-way match involved in signing off Section 8 of the V5C. We will continue to look into this and take it up directly with DVLA."

Comment: this is not very comforting news when the planned end of paper tax discs is only around 10 weeks away! One can only hope the DVLA will listen to the concerns of represenatative bodies like the FBHVC and ensure a clear and smooth running system is set up. Sadly the introduction of the extension to the tax exempt status for cars built in 1973 which applied from 1st April 2014 was not a reassuring example of that! A number of our members incurred the wholly unnecessary considerable expense of sending the same package of papers to DVLA twice to secure the tax class change from PLG to Historic and a NIL value tax disc.

If you visit the DVLA website via the link above you will also see a link to a video on YouTube called "Goodbye to the tax disc" - when you see this you are left wondering whether it is a spoof. Surely they would be better listening to the FBHVC and spending their time and funding on preparaing a well thought through system and plan for its introduction?
V8 Register - MG Car Club - the leading group for MG V8 enthusiasts at www.v8register.net