Car Tax discrepancy

[Cyker]

I just got a letter from the DVLA telling me to pay £145 for my car tax but when I goto the website it wants £155.

I assume this is because the letter was printed before they upped the cost.

Is there a way I can just make it charge £145? Or should I just pay the £155?

I mean, on one hand it's only a tenner, but on the other hand a tenner is like 100 miles worth of fuel in this car...!

 

[FROSTYBALLS]

When was the tax due? 1st April?

[flash22]

It went up a tenner this year, so it's £155

[Cyker]

Due end of this month. It's just annoying because it clearly says £145 on the letter. I would think legally I should be able to pay that as that is what it says in print. Would probably have been able to if you could still pay by post, but the website trumps the letter.

Wonder if I could get the Post Office to take £145, but not worth the fuel to find out as the only Post Offices nearby that do car tax stuff are in car-hostile areas.

 

[Roger_N]

51 minutes ago, Cyker said:

Due end of this month. It's just annoying because it clearly says £145 on the letter. I would think legally I should be able to pay that as that is what it says in print. Would probably have been able to if you could still pay by post, but the website trumps the letter.

Wonder if I could get the Post Office to take £145, but not worth the fuel to find out as the only Post Offices nearby that do car tax stuff are in car-hostile areas.

 

If you had paid it early you may have got away with it.

v149-rates-of-vehicle-tax-from-1-april-2022-for-cars-motorcycles-light-goods-vehicles-and-private-light-goods-vehicles (1).pdf

[Bernard Foy]

In Ireland I am charged €180 fo 12 months which is more or less what you pay in the UK. We have always been paying road tax according to the size of the the engine, then it was changed according to the emissions.

[Bernard Foy]

I wonder what Peter is paying on the Yaris Hybrid in France??

[Cyker]

13 minutes ago, Roger_N said:

If you had paid it early you may have got away with it.

v149-rates-of-vehicle-tax-from-1-april-2022-for-cars-motorcycles-light-goods-vehicles-and-private-light-goods-vehicles (1).pdf 247.45 kB · 1 download

I literally got the letter today! I don't think you can pay it more than a month in advance anyway...?

6 minutes ago, Bernard Foy said:

I wonder what Peter is paying on the Yaris Hybrid in France??

That would be interesting to know... I have no idea; They might have a completely different system!

[Roger_N]

3 minutes ago, Cyker said:

I literally got the letter today! I don't think you can pay it more than a month in advance anyway...?

I was thinking if you got the letter before the end of March, you can usually pay it within a few days of it being due.

[Cyker]

The timing is just weird - It's been printed with £145, but they must have sent it post-price change as we're well into April already and Royal Mail aren't *that* slow.

The DVLA make it inordinately difficult to contact them with queries like this...!

 

[Rhymes with Paris]

Hello Cyker,is this on your Yaris hybrid?

I have been assuming hybrids were free or £20 or so.

Then again we do have a multitude of systems at the moment to rate different cars.

I considered at one point a Merc 190 diesel from the 80s,no emmisions gubbins to destroy the reliability, and no road tax.

A friend in Yorkshire had a 70s Merc diesel,tax exempt and collected waste cooking oil from local takeaways, which they were only too pleased to get rid of for free.

He had a few outbuildings and the space to cook up bio deisel in a tank, with chemicals and filters or scrubbers.

From what he told me at the time,if it was for personal use only no duty was payable.

Oh and the car had to have the right fuel pump to cope, can't remember if it was Bosch or other.

So more or less free motoring.😊

No use to you maybe, London area?

But in a rural area with space to do it,and the strength to lug 5 gallon tubs of cooking oil about,may be useful to someone.

[Hornet3D]

The letters I have had in the past always had a clause saying that the cost would higher if there was a change in the tax rate.

[Cyker]

Sadly as it is a post-2017 car it's on the 'New' car tax scheme, where everyone pays a flat rate of £155 (Now £165), but 'alternative fuel vehicles' (Whatever that means) get a £10 discount on that (Hybrids are classed as 'alternative fuel'), and EVs get a 100% discount.

So you can have e.g. two identical Auris registered on 1st Jan 2017 and one on 1st July 2017 - The first one will be £0 tax for life, while the other would be £165. Makes the tax on your T-Sport not seem so bad now 'eh?  

[Rhymes with Paris]

The mind boggles 🤯 on different rates of car tax.

But if I was covering 20,000 miles a year as when I was working, I would still choose quality of build over car tax rates.

I think the tax rate on my Tsport is based on 165 g /kilometer.

Which does not square with the reality of 2 or 3 thousand miles a year for me now.

It's a bit of a lash up really 

 

 

 

[Cyker]

Ouch that's higher than I expected!! Still, be glad it's not as bad as one of the teachers; They got a Lexus RX300 thinking it was a hybrid; It's not, and their car tax is well over £500!!  

I keep telling them they should flog it for a 450h or something but they still have it. I pale to think what the fuel bill for that behemoth is like!

[Hybrid21]

12 hours ago, Hornet3D said:

The letters I have had in the past always had a clause saying that the cost would higher if there was a change in the tax rate.

Yes I renewed my road tax the other day and the letter did state £145 and it turned out to be £155.

Looking at the letter again it also states that that a change in tax rate can affect the cost.

I still think that £155 is too much for a clean vehicle, and no incentive to change to a hybrid.

Iain

[Cyker]

Yeah it is a bit of a kick in the proverbials, esp. if you previously owned a more polluting car that had a lower tax rate like me!

That said, IMHO the car tax should never have been used to incentivize our car buying habits in the first place. A flat rate for all is more sustainable - I just wish they hadn't exempted EVs as they will need to make ANOTHER tax scheme in the future when EVs become more common.

I'm not generally opposed to paying taxes as i understand what they are for, but I want to see what my taxes are getting me and at the moment I am not - Council tax has shot up but Schools and NHS are still badly underfunded, and my road tax going from £30 to £155 but the roads are still in a terrible state of repair (So glad I switched to 15" rims!) and instead of improving road safety they're making roads more dangerous with stupid schemes like removing bus laybys so they have to stop in the middle of the road, creating more traffic jams, closing off roads, creating more traffic jams, and apparently trying to kill us all by removing the hard shoulder with these 'smart' motorways, where they love to randomly change the speed limits back and forth at rush hour so nobody knows what speed they should be doing!