Unpaid UK road tax

[troll]

Hello Mr. Avery

I would like to point out to you that my name is Albert Troll and I take great exception to it being shortened to "Albi". It is bad enough people using my name to get at people they don't like without you giving me a nickname. Maybe you like being called Ron instead of Ronald but I would like you to refer to me as Albert or Mr.Troll. It is not my fault that when my parents came to England from Russia they shortened the name of Trolsky to what my father thought of as a typically English name. He was like a lot of us, he badly wanted to integrate into the society that had taken us in.

All the best

Albert 

[Lorribee]

Been reading this with interest as we have just bought from an English couple an old 4x4 which they have driven over here for two years on English plates but insured by french company thought all was O.K.we believed, we on completion of purchased Sorn,d the vehicle in Britain and

are currently going through Impot{ another story for another day},we have recieved confirmation from dvlc and as yet no demand for payment of unpaid road Tax are we in for nasty shock ? Also we dont think our Drire office likes the English he hangs up everytime we ring to make appointment in our best french, resorting to picketing gates next....

[opas]

Lorribee, If I have understood you crrectly, you have bought a car here in France from an English person, who has had the car in France for 2 years, You have the Log book which you have sent to DVLA to change ownership and to(I assume you are keeping the car in France) to inform them(DVLA) that you are exporting it.

As far as I am aware ,you are not the person that would be liable for any arrears of road tax, that would be the person who owned the car in the past. As for declairing SORN, are you not planning on using the car? SORN is for when a vehicle is parked off road... not when it is being driven around France without a Tax disc on.

Saw an ad the other night on my illegaly set up sky television That was for an  automatic £80.00 fine for not displaying a tax disc.....so what is the fine for not owning one?

Mrs o

[Debra]

Saw an ad the other night on my illegaly set up sky television That was for an  automatic £80.00 fine for not displaying a tax disc.....so what is the fine for not owning one?

Mrs o

According to this site: http://www.avonandsomerset.police.uk/InfoCentre/ItemDetails.aspx?ItemID=545#8 "You may be prosecuted and liable to a fine of £1000 or five times the amount of duty chargeable, whichever is the greater. In addition, you will be ordered to pay a further penalty equal to the duty owed."

If the vehicle is found on the road in the UK with no disc displayed, it can be clamped and confiscated and if you don't produce a valid tax certificate within 14 days you will be prosecuted. 

[Krill]

Suprised to see you were able to cancel you insurance when you took your car off the road, when I tried to do this with my motorcycle I was told by the agent that it was a legal requirment to have any vehicle registered to you insured at all times and the only way I could cancel it was to show them proof of sale or destruction

[Debra]

[quote]Suprised to see you were able to cancel you insurance when you took your car off the road, when I tried to do this with my motorcycle I was told by the agent that it was a legal requirment to have any...[/quote]

To the best of my knowledge this is rubbish - but a good way of the insurance company retaining business!  As long as its off the public road and you have a SORN declaration in place, its up to you if you want to risk it being stolen while having no cover for theft.  What about when you cancel your insurance to go with another insurer?  They don't ask for proof that you're insured elsewhere.

[Krill]

Yes I agree Debra but that was what I was told by my agent in Civray, naming no names but I wont be using them again

[Debra]

[quote]Yes I agree Debra but that was what I was told by my agent in Civray, naming no names but I wont be using them again[/quote]

Sorry - I may be wrong (I was talking about SORN in the UK): that is the rules in the UK but you should check the rules in France, which obviously may be different.  If you look at this site, http://www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk/EvlPortalApp/application;JSESSIONID_EvlPortalApp=C3GkVfNDJ3ldU1Yw6vlNCrt9Sy5NN4hKV1pVh5YxKyvbTjbVHMIV!626476071!-114161062?origin=commonquestions_en.jsp&event=bea.portal.framework.internal.portlet.event&pageid=Common+Questions&portletid=commonquestions&wfevent=insurance&EVENT_SUB_TYPE=FAQIF&FAQ=ins&language=en ,

it says you can't get a UK tax disc on a vehicle which is covered by an insurer outside the UK system, unless they have entered the scheme which records all their insurance details on the MIB database, which they can do - but it also says that no foreign insurers have chosen to do so.

 

[Debra]

So to the original poster - you'll have to contact DVLA and be honest, unless you want to try saying your car has been off the road in France all this time, because it looks like you wouldn't have been able to get UK tax under your circumstances anyway, but you need the new registration document for your car.  If the French authorities find out what has happened - it may be them who will prosecute you.  If you had a French MOT equivalent done and had French insurance, its whatever else you should have had from the French requirements that is relevant - and you may be expected to pay backover for that.  If there is no French equivalent of the UK road tax, what else should you have had but didn't?  Does anyone know the  penalty for driving a car in France which isn't registered in France and should be?

[Krill]

My bike is French and French registered so none of that should matter

[Debra]

Oh yes - and as another poster pointed out, its also a finable offence not to notify DVLA of your new address, as well as not to inform them that the vehicle is off road, so you might get done for that too, or is it registered to someone else's UK address?  The more you look into it or think about it, the more 'stuffed' seems like the right term!

[Debra]

[quote]My bike is French and French registered so none of that should matter[/quote]

Thats what I was referring to, if you don't insure an off road vehicle in the UK its at your own risk and not illegal, but are the regulations the same in France?  They may be different and your insurer may be correct.

[Quillan]

You know what I find interesting is that the originator of this post has only ever posted ONCE and it was to start this thread. How odd (and no it's not me).

[Debra]

[quote]You know what I find interesting is that the originator of this post has only ever posted ONCE and it was to start this thread. How odd (and no it's not me).[/quote]

lol - so do you think it was just to start a debate off and then disappear, or that they are now sitting in deep despair at all the dire predictions about what could happen to them?  I don't think they were after sympathy, since they posted as 'learnedmylesson', but maybe they were hoping for some better news?

[opas]

I am almost certain that the poster who said his French insurer wouldn`t let him cancel his ins , was correct, at one point we owned 2 cars ,but only wanted to use one of them....the other was for sale, and asked to cancel the ins as we had put the car in the garage, we were informed that we could have insurance on the 2 cars for 30 days at no extra cost, but after that timespan we should inform them of the situation and that if we sold the car to produce the certificate de vent(sure thats the correct form....)

If the French and British systems got together there would be an awful lot of Brits round here who would loose their once posh cars.....One in our village is a private reg merc about 10 years old ...no valid disk, and yesterday I went to the municiple pool and parked behind a vw convertable with out any tax disk and they have just opened up a resto and also have another untaxed car!

Mrs O

[Debra]

[quote]I am almost certain that the poster who said his French insurer wouldn`t let him cancel his ins , was correct, at one point we owned 2 cars ,but only wanted to use one of them....the other was for sal...[/quote]

Same again, with a British registration but no British tax? 

Isn't there some way of the French authorities knowing that a car is insured in France but not registered there?  I didn't realise that the DVLA could check whether we are insured online now (and apparently French insurers can be included in their database if they wanted to) as we still have to produce our certificate of insurance at the post office - but it seems that even though the post office issue a tax disc from the certificate, the DVLA still check on this database to make sure its valid.  It makes sense, since you could either not renew your insurance or cancel it once the tax disc was there so they need to be able to check the current status. 

Can the French not do this also or do they not have a similar system yet?  Does noone get stopped by the police and asked for their documents?  Good to know that about the insurance Mrs O.  We want to change one of our cars, so it seems clear the best thing to do is sell one here and buy one when we come over and make sure we transfer the one we're taking with us straight away.