Tax your car with no insurance?

charlie_says

I just heard on Radio 1 a Senator claiming that you can go throught the online car taxing website and enter a fake insurance certificate number, he tested the system out on his wifes car and just received the tax disc in the post!

Wow.

Most people now use the internet car tax service nowadays I would imagine. What a loophole that is. Wonder what the cops make of this?

Riskymove

I wonder has he committed an offense?

L1011

It doesn't verify the policy number at the time of entry, I would have assumed it would have verified it at the time of issuing the disc though, oops...

Anyway, as goes what the cops will think - you still aren't going to have a valid insurance disc now are ye?

Wishbone Ash

charlie_says wrote: »

I just heard on Radio 1 a Senator claiming that you can go throught the online car taxing website and enter a fake insurance certificate number, he tested the system out on his wifes car and just received the tax disc in the post!

Wow.

Most people now use the internet car tax service nowadays I would imagine. What a loophole that is. Wonder what the cops make of this?

It has been discussed here many times.

Riskymove wrote: »

I wonder has he committed an offense?

His car was insured.

alias no.9

Where does the assumption that a scumbag*, wreckless enough to drive without insurance, would bother their arse to tax their car?

*Anyone prepared to drive without insurance qualifies as a scumbag IMHO

Seth Brundle

There is no link between the different insurance companys and the motor tax system. You can enter pretty much anything as a policy number and it will accept it. I don't know if there are any manual checks done afterwards however.

Riskymove

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

It has been discussed here many times.

His car was insured.

But he deliberately gave false information to motor Tax office.....is that an offense?

Riskymove

MYOB wrote: »

Anyway, as goes what the cops will think - you still aren't going to have a valid insurance disc now are ye?

exactly and you have still given all info like address etc to get the disc...and of course...paid the tax


hardly likely that people driving around without insurance are going to do that

Gregor Samsa

Riskymove wrote: »

But he deliberately gave false information to motor Tax office.....is that an offense?

It doesn't say anywhere on the site that it's an offence to give false information, and there's no signature (or check box) required to confirm that the information you've given is accurate, and that you're aware that it's an offence to give false information (which many official forms have), so I'd assume it's not an offence.

There's also nothing on the form to verify who actually filled it out, so how could they go after someone for false information?

Anyway, it would be very easy to innocently mis-type your insurance number...

Wishbone Ash

phutyle wrote: »

Anyway, it would be very easy to innocently mis-type your insurance number...

That wouldn't be deliberate though!

Riskymove

the RFA100A Motor Tax Renewal Form clearly states anyone making False Declarations are liable to heavy fines

..don't know about online forms

MAYOMICK

I cannot see what the hassle is about taxing a car without insurance.It might have meant something years ago when the only disc you had to have on your windscreen was a tax disc.Now you have to have an insurance disc and its up to the gardai to enforce this.At least if the tax is paid the government are getting extra revenue and this might help pay towards the enforcement of the insurance issue.

Tony Danza

Good, if somebody isn't going to pay their insurance, they might as well pay their tax.:D

Gregor Samsa

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

That wouldn't be deliberate though!

I suppose I meant "claim to have innocently mis-typed your insurance number..."

Riskymove

phutyle wrote: »

I suppose I meant "claim to have innocently mis-typed your insurance number..."

1. This guy is telling everyone he deliberately did it

2. If you had a policy number to claim to mistype then why would you bother putting in false one?

Guy:Incognito

Seriously, whats the big deal here? As stated, if you dont have insurance, your most likey not going to bother to tax it anyway.

Riskymove

There is no big deal....another Politician trying to get publicity on a non-story...glad he has not been named here.


I am just hoping that he might get done!!:)

Anan1

Tony Danza wrote: »

Good, if somebody isn't going to pay their insurance, they might as well pay their tax.:D

I guess so! The bottom line may sensibly enough be never to turn down money?

Wishbone Ash

Riskymove wrote: »

glad he has not been named here

He has now - Senator Joe O'Toole! :pac:

Riskymove

Wishbone Ash wrote: »

He has now - Senator Joe O'Toole! :pac:

:pac::pac::pac::pac:

seamus

Yeah, this has been known about and kind of relies on the honours system.

I honestly don't see any serial insurance-skippers abusing this system to tax their car. Why would they tax their car?

Just another blatant case of the government failing to utilise simple and cheap computer solutions to prevent people from ****ing with the law.

Getting current valid insurance details from insurance companies on a daily basis = easy
Comparing insurance details in database against entered value = easy
Compiling a list of expired/cancelled insurance policies = easy

cyclopath2001

seamus wrote: »

Just another blatant case of the government failing to utilise simple and cheap computer solutions to prevent people from ****ing with the law.

Getting current valid insurance details from insurance companies on a daily basis = easy
Comparing insurance details in database against entered value = easy
Compiling a list of expired/cancelled insurance policies = easy

They tried it in the UK and it was both troublesome and expensive.

Each insurance company has different systems and different formats for their numbers. The public might enter codes with spaces, without, with dashes. Matching would not always succeed.

The existing system (with no automatic checks) is cost-effective and avoids technological over-kill.

ardmacha

Each insurance company has different systems and different formats for their numbers. The public might enter codes with spaces, without, with dashes. Matching would not always succeed.

No problem. Just require car insurance policies to use a standard numbering scheme to have legal effect. Indeed the EU should do this.

There should be a database of policies in effect and some scheme for identifying who is insured e.g. having to provide licence number for named drivers. Then it would be possible to establish quickly if a given driver was insured for a given car.

TheBigLebowski

I don't get what the problem is with this. Tax and insurance are 2 completely different things. Just because you get taxed using false details, that doesn't mean you are insured and vice versa. "So you have tax? Where's your insurance?" says the cop. I must be missing the point. The tax people may as well not ask for insurance details. And anywho, as the man said, anyone could give correct details to get taxed but cancel their insurance the next day. Why should you need insurance to get taxed?

seamus

cyclopath2001 wrote: »

Each insurance company has different systems and different formats for their numbers. The public might enter codes with spaces, without, with dashes. Matching would not always succeed.

As someone who works largely with managing the movement of data between completely different systems, I can tell you that this is not a problem. You give the insurance companies a set format and say, "This is what we want". It's then the insurance company's problem to supply their data in the correct format.

Validating user input is equally easy. The input has to match an input mask or it gives an error. It should even be possible to create an input mask for each individual company. Where someone enters an expired policy number or something otherwise weird comes up, it gets sent on for manual checking.

The only hard thing is making sure that you don't get an idiot to implement it. When that happens you use too much technology, spend too much money and end up with something that doesn't actually work.

BnA

TheBigLebowski wrote: »

I don't get what the problem is with this. Tax and insurance are 2 completely different things. Just because you get taxed using false details, that doesn't mean you are insured and vice versa. "So you have tax? Where's your insurance?" says the cop. I must be missing the point. The tax people may as well not ask for insurance details. And anywho, as the man said, anyone could give correct details to get taxed but cancel their insurance the next day. Why should you need insurance to get taxed?

I agree.

I don't get it.

Why would someone who is not going to bother taxing their car, go to the trouble of insuring it. I mean the only thing a tax disk will do for you is it will stop you getting in trouble with the law if you are stopped. Why would you bother getting one if you are not getting insured and will be in trouble with the law if stopped anyway...!!! I mean, do they think the Guards will not notice the Insurace disk missing if teh Tax is Ok....?

Also, if someone is only going to pay for one of them surely it would be the insurance you would pay for first. FFS, driving without Tax, means you are putting yourself in danger of a bit of squirming and trying to talk your way out of it with some Guard. Very worst case, your car is siezed. Driving without insurance, get involved in an accident that's your fault and you could be goosed. You could loose everything.

I'm fairly disorganised at the best of times, and I have often driven for a few months without Tax (purely from not getting around to sorting it out). But I wouldn't cross the road in a car without insurance.

javaboy

BnA wrote: »

I agree.

I don't get it.

Why would someone who is not going to bother taxing their car, go to the trouble of insuring it. I mean the only thing a tax disk will do for you is it will stop you getting in trouble with the law if you are stopped. Why would you bother getting one if you are not getting insured and will be in trouble with the law if stopped anyway...!!! I mean, do they think the Guards will not notice the Insurace disk missing if teh Tax is Ok....?

I imagine it's a bit easier to fool a Garda with a fake insurance disc than a fake tax disc. There's so many insurers out there that Gardai couldn't possibly know all the telltale signs as to whether it is fake/genuine. On the other hand there's only one 'company' doling out tax discs. I'm sure there's loads of other equally silly reasons why someone might want to tax their ve-hicle without insuring it first.