It is less than a month ago that the FT reported that £400 million is being lost to evasion of the new paperless road fund licence, a matter of some concern to me as it shows all the weaknesses of on-line systems.
The subject came up in conversation with an old friend, Peter Dawe (who formed the UK's first internet service provider), yesterday and he offered an obvious solution. Every single garage in the UK now photographs cars as they arrive to buy fuel and almost without exception the systems they use can read the number plates of the vehicles in question. Given the high speed connections almost all such places also have for processing payments there was, he suggested an obvious solution to the issue of the road fund tax, one of the major reasons for which continues to be a check that cars have MoTs and insurance. First he suggested putting the tax charge onto the fuel. Second, it should be made illegal to sell fuel to any car without it first being real-time checked that the vehicle in question was both insured and had an MoT certificate. This check could be very quick indeed, and guarantee almost 100% compliance.
We agreed there was a minor issue with foreign plates: it's one that would be easy to resolve as almost all comply to an EU standard.
Technology can't solve all tax problems, but in this case it might. And the objections from the libertarians can be easily overcome: those without an MoT and insurance are infringing the liberty of others. It is simply not safe to let them drive: denying them fuel ensures that it would be pretty hard for them to do so. Not impossible, I agree, but pretty hard.
And the road fund licence revenue would also be fully replaced.
I thought it worth sharing.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
The larger part of “the lost £400 million” is due to practically everyone changing to monthly direct debit.
This has been mentioned elsewhere…and, of course, with the change to continuos taxation, where the vehicle HAS to be either taxed or SORNed, and when a vehicle has been sold the taxation is immediately cancelled as soon as the V5 hits DVLA….since it is cancelled to the start of the NEXT month, there will be an overlap of payments, since the new owner HAS to tax it immediately…usually to the start of the month.
ALL large filling stations have ANPR systems and most of those are directly linked into the natiowide ANPR system…which checks ALL vehicle data in realtime (over 20 million vehicles checked, automatically, every day.
There is no evidence that DD is the reason
If you wander through the gov data on this:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/479992/ved-2015.pdf
“Of the unlicensed vehicles identified in the survey:
58% had been unlicensed for no more than 2 months at the beginning of the survey
45% were more than 10 years old
41% had changed hands since transferable vehicle tax was abolished on 1 October 2014”
Much of the shortfall is recovered through enforcement action…then there is the “unwilling” non-payment due to non-transferability of tax…which, surprisingly(!), very many still do not know about:
“Non transferability of road tax when vehicles change hands, and automatic refunds.
Any existing vehicle tax now automatically ends when a vehicle changes hands. The previous keeper is automatically refunded any full months of remaining tax,and the new keeper must tax the vehicle immediately. Previously, any remaining tax could be transferred with the vehicle, and the previous keeper would need to claim a refund if they wanted one. **There is therefore potential for evasion rates to increase if the new keeper fails to understand or comply with the new arrangements.** However,this situation can only arise where a vehicle changes hands, and the DVLA have been issuing reminders to all new keepers who have not taxed their vehicle”
As an aside; The penalty for no MOT on a vehicle is a maximum of £1000.
The fine imposed is £60.
No points.
And you wouldn`t be able to buy petrol for your lawnmower unless accompanied by a grown-up in a car… but seriously v good idea.
How would it deal with cloned cars?
As I said, it’s not perfect
But I suspect it would not be hard to build in something a little more complex
I don’t care how they do it – just get it done.
It seems OK to ‘nudge’ us into not having any more kids by cutting benefits or to encourage us to not tolerate the disabled but it is not OK to ensure people pay their road tax (the ‘any tax is bad’ argument).
The present system seems to help insurance companies make a healthy profit out of disaster and harms those who do pay.
Interesting. I’ll need to thik this over as its pretty invasive and could be used to track your movements which would be an invasion of privacy.
Do you have a mobile phone?
If so your every movement is already tracked
And CCTV does the same
I get that, but I’m not sure I want to give them yet another way of doing it.
Glasgow has already bought a surveillance system from an Israeli company, that is designed to do way beyond just facial recognition and is actually designed to automatically spot “unusual behaviour”. i.e. predict crimes
http://glasgow.stv.tv/articles/310713-glasgows-new-surveillance-installed-by-israeli-firm-nice-systems/
Passively surrendering even more individual freedom is something I’m not a fan off.
Plus I can turn my phone off (which in truth it normally is) and if I really wanted to hide my face, I could wear a hat (or a Bhurka unless I was in France 😛 ). I cannot legally obscure my licence plate.
And I would like to know you comply with the law
I pay no road tax and don’t use petrol
Should have said I have an electric vehicle. No road tax but interesting to see what the Tory government does.
I was wondering what the answer to the cryptic clue was
As the owner of an old Jaguar who gets hammered to the tune of £300/year for tax, I’m all for your ‘include duty in petrol prices’ idea – and it’s one that, understandably, is much debate in the “big engine, not used very often” owner’s clubs.
My other half has a little 1.0 Citroen that costs her £20 a year in tax, and probably does half to 2/3 more miles per gallon, but she drives into work every day and I take the bus direct to the University Campus where I work. The Jag is only wheeled out for long drives to weekends away, holidays or visiting parents.
As a consequence she does about 4 times more miles per year than me, but I pay 7.5x the fuel duty, there’s absolutely no way that the claim that my car is being penalised for being a “gas guzzler” stacks up in cases like this. A couple extra pence per litre would be a much fairer, more egalitarian system, would be unavoidable, and would presumably be able to save a lot of money in admin costs too.
But you are missing my point
No I got your point entirely, just saying that you could kill 2 birds with one stone with one of them. Still useful to have the ANPR system for MoT and Insurance detection, and Tax if system stays the same, just making the point that current tax system utterly illogical, a point even our now ex-Chancellor seems to at least partly recognise as he’s replaced it with a flat rate (albeit with punitive first 5 year top ups)
Fair enough
I agree Chris that adding VED to fuel prices is the way to go. It’s not called an emissions-based Excise Duty for nothing.
VED is one of a few regressive taxes the UK still has along with things like Council Tax and the TV Licence and non-payment results in many thousands in front of the magistrates every year wasting police and court time which could be used to much better effect.
I think it will be nearer 15p/litre…and the use of “emission-control-zones” doesn’t do much to stop emissions, but it brings in a lot of money.
As an aside, my 1994 diesel 4WD is NOT subject to the low emission zone (London) laws. yet its emissions are higher than a modern truck..and all the restriction just mean off-loading outside the zone/s and reloading onto smaller vehicles to deliver…a no-win situation…unless you operate small vans…
No such thing exists. Cars are taxed, not roads. The tax raised from taxing cars goes into the general spending pot, none of it is hypothecated for roads.
I agree
But of there is now a better tax base why not use it?
Interesting…
If you calculate the fuel price increase per litre to recover the VED obtained now..
Then impose the same rate increase to trucks.. (average mileage 108,000: average fuel consumption 2 miles-per-litre)…present road tax Between £165 (band A1) to £1850 (band G)
Guess there will be “adjustments”
http://www.constructionenquirer.com/2016/09/15/hinkley-point-c-nuclear-power-station-gets-go-ahead/
Once upon a time it may have made sense to have tax hypothecation in certain areas. However, in 2016, Road Fund Licence is a nonsense.
It should be thrown in the bin along with other regressive taxes like the TV Licence and so-called National Insurance. While we’re at it, a serious reform of VAT is in order.
And given as we know (from this blog for example) that taxes don’t fund Government spending, and we have a demand-deficient economy which is in need of fiscal stimulus, those taxes would not necessarily need to be replaced on a £ for £ basis by something else.