Most drivers will be able to remember the previous car tax system, which involved buying a tax disc from the Post Office every six months or a year and displaying it in the windscreen of your car. This all changed in October 2014, when the paper tax discs were abandoned entirely for an online system. Police officers now no longer have to waste time inspecting car tax discs to make sure they are genuine and haven’t expired; now most police vehicles are fitted with automatic number plate recognition software (ANPR), which indicates when a car passes which is untaxed, or has no insurance or MOT certificate. This makes things much easier from a police perspective, but drivers no longer have that visible check to see whether their tax is still valid or not. There is however a better and much more efficient way of keeping on top of your car tax.
If you wish to drive your vehicle legally on the road in the UK, then the answer is probably yes. There are some limited exemptions from the system, mainly for much older vehicles which are classed as “classics” and over 40 years old, and for vehicles which are used by people in receipt of specific disability benefits. There are other cars and vehicles which aren’t exempt from road tax but who are charged at a zero rate. This might sound like the same thing and in practical terms it is, but drivers of electric vehicles for example which don’t pay road tax still have to go through the process of “taxing” their car each year even though there is no bill to pay.
The other main exemption to car tax is for vehicles which are in storage, up on bricks in the garage, or locked away over the winter months and not being used. A SORN – Statutory Off Road Notification – is a way of letting the government know that your vehicle is off the road and hitting pause on the road tax. Many drivers also choose to cancel their insurance at a time when they are not using their car, and can also wait to get a new MOT certificate too. If you do want to take your vehicle off the road and get a SORN, the main requirement is that you must be able to keep it somewhere away from the public road, such as in your garage, or in a friend’s field. Once you decide that you want to start using the car again, all you need to do is go back to the website and pay your car tax, get a MOT check and organise another insurance policy.
With the paper tax disc which served as a prompt to renew your road tax disappearing, you’ll have to look for another way to check your car tax status. Luckily, this is really easy to do. All you need to find out when your car tax is due is the car’s registration number to enter into the website. The website will then ask you confirm the make and colour of your car, and on the next page, will state in coloured boxes the tax and MOT status – a green box means the tax and MOT is current, a red box means it has expired. If you see two green boxes then you are good to go and driving legally. The green box will also give the month and year in which both your MOT and car tax expires. This is the date you need to note on your calendar or in your phone reminders so that you aren’t caught out by missing your expiry date.
Finding out how much you are supposed to pay for your car tax is unfortunately not quite as easy as finding out when it is due. The website which allows you to check when your tax is due won’t have any information about prices, although you can use the information there to work out what the bill might be. Car tax is complicated and there are many different bands of payment depending on how much carbon your car emits int the atmosphere. The most polluting cars, vans and lorries will pay the most, and smaller electric vehicles will pay nothing at all. Most family cars will fall somewhere between the two. There are many places online which allow you to put in your registration number and find out how much you can expect to pay in road tax, and if you are buying a new car directly from a dealership, they will be able to tell you what the bill will be. Remember, it is your responsibility to make sure that any car you buy is covered by road tax before you drive it home, whether that car is brand new, or second hand.
If like most people you choose to pay your car tax annually, it’s easy to miss the deadline to renew if you have a lot of other things going on at the same time. As it’s so easy to check car tax online, it’s worth making sure that you check to see when you’re due to pay, and set up a reminder on your phone or in some other way. If your car falls into one of the more expensive groups for car tax, this will also give you the opportunity to save up. Nobody likes the shock of an unexpected bill in a month where you’ve already budgeted for your planned expenditure.
DVLA do send out reminders for car tax about four weeks before the payment is due, but these brown letters are easily missed, especially when you live in a large block of flats with communal mail spaces. Keeping track of renewal dates online should ensure that you are never put in the position of getting a fine for not having car tax because of a genuine mistake.