I month's grace with car tax?

tuisginideach

Elderly friend needs to get all-clear from dr re general health and eyesight pre-returning to driving her own car. Her car tax is due to expire end June. She is not in a position to visit dr pre-end June. The car is not in use and is parked in her drive. As far as I can remember, you did not have to pay a late fee if you taxed car within 1 month of expiry date i.e. if she taxed car pre 30th July she would not be charged late fee. Am I correct? No point in her taxing car now if dr says 1st July she can't drive again.

quadrifoglio verde

Yes you're correct

Tax it on the 31at of July and it will cover July
Tax it 1st of August, you'll pay a penalty, back tax for July and 3/6/12 months tax

tuisginideach

Thank you

punisher5112

Sign off road.

Go onto motortax.ie enter reg. Request pin and away you go.

This way car isn't been driven so no back tax. If car was already out of tax it's not possible but in op case do sign it off you can select up to 12 months and tax whenever suits to have back on road

_Kaiser_

quadrifoglio verde wrote: »

Yes you're correct

Tax it on the 31at of July and it will cover July

But will you not run into issues with overzealous AGS members? The "grace" period isn't anything official as far as I'm aware.

EG: Say my tax is due 1st July but it'd suit me better financially to pay for it at the end of July instead... presumably this will be flagged by ANPR or at a checkpoint (I know... it's rare but they happen!) and then you have the hassle of taxing it immediately and presenting at a station, no?

Or am I wrong? This is Ireland after all so who knows.. :pac:

Atlantic Dawn

_Kaiser_ wrote: »

But will you not run into issues with overzealous AGS members? The "grace" period isn't anything official as far as I'm aware.

EG: Say my tax is due 1st July but it'd suit me better financially to pay for it at the end of July instead... presumably this will be flagged by ANPR or at a checkpoint (I know... it's rare but they happen!) and then you have the hassle of taxing it immediately and presenting at a station, no?

Or am I wrong? This is Ireland after all so who knows.. :pac:

It's 2 months before they can seize, they are the rules of the game so to speak...

Similarly, the Gardaí are empowered to impound any vehicle which has not been taxed for a period of two months or more. In reality this means that if you are stopped by the Gardaí while driving a vehicle and the road tax for that vehicle is out of date by two months or more, the Gardaí can seize that vehicle and impound it until such time as the owner can show proof that the motor tax has been paid for that vehicle to include the date on which it was impounded (i.e. paying the arrears due on the vehicle). Again, the owner of the vehicle will be liable for all charges and costs incurred by the Gardaí in the removal and storage of the vehicle.

http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/travel_and_recreation/motoring_1/driving_offences/driving_offences.html

unkel

There is no grace period!

If she drives it on July 1st and the tax is out end of June, she can be done for driving without tax and for driving without displaying the tax disc. Now most Gardai would not fine you for that, but you could be unlucky, could be a no-nonsense checkpoint, could be fine based on spot by computer (license plate recognition in Garda car), could be fined by traffic warden, etc.

The grace is that you have up to the end of the next month to get a current tax disc. So you could still buy a July/Aug/Sept tax disk on July 31st. But your car would not be taxed in the meantime!!!

CFlat

unkel wrote: »

There is no grace period!

If she drives it on July 1st and the tax is out end of June, she can be done for driving without tax and for driving without displaying the tax disc. Now most Gardai would not fine you for that, but you could be unlucky, could be a no-nonsense checkpoint, could be fine based on spot by computer (license plate recognition in Garda car), could be fined by traffic warden, etc.

The grace is that you have up to the end of the next month to get a current tax disc. So you could still buy a July/Aug/Sept tax disk on July 31st. But your car would not be taxed in the meantime!!!

Are you sure about that? I'm driving over 30 years and I've never heard anyone say that and I've plenty of times been driving within the months 'grace' and have never had any problems with Gards OR traffic wardens and those lads don't give an inch.

CiniO

unkel wrote: »

There is no grace period!

If she drives it on July 1st and the tax is out end of June, she can be done for driving without tax and for driving without displaying the tax disc. Now most Gardai would not fine you for that, but you could be unlucky, could be a no-nonsense checkpoint, could be fine based on spot by computer (license plate recognition in Garda car), could be fined by traffic warden, etc.

The grace is that you have up to the end of the next month to get a current tax disc. So you could still buy a July/Aug/Sept tax disk on July 31st. But your car would not be taxed in the meantime!!!

While being done for driving without displaying tax disc surely happens, probably not too often right in first month after expiry, but happens. It's only €60 though.

But how can anyone be done for driving without tax?

There's no fixed penalty assigned to driving untaxed.
Garda can not issue fine and points for that.

All they can do is to sue someone to court for driving untaxed, but in pretty much all cases, on court case once person will show that they purchased tax, there will be no fine...

There just isn't any real penalty for driving untaxed, and that's the reason they introduced this silly SORD thing, which makes no sense whatsoever. They should have just introduced fines for people driving untaxed - that's all.

Del2005

CiniO wrote: »

While being done for driving without displaying tax disc surely happens, probably not too often right in first month after expiry, but happens. It's only €60 though.

But how can anyone be done for driving without tax?

There's no fixed penalty assigned to driving untaxed.
Garda can not issue fine and points for that.

All they can do is to sue someone to court for driving untaxed, but in pretty much all cases, on court case once person will show that they purchased tax, there will be no fine...

There just isn't any real penalty for driving untaxed, and that's the reason they introduced this silly SORD thing, which makes no sense whatsoever. They should have just introduced fines for people driving untaxed - that's all.

The SORD is to stop the people who routinely lied on statutory declarations that they hadn't used the vehicle for the last x months, therefore there's no way to avoid tax after it expires unless you add 2 owners to the VLC.

Boskowski

quadrifoglio verde wrote: »

Yes you're correct

Tax it on the 31at of July and it will cover July
Tax it 1st of August, you'll pay a penalty, back tax for July and 3/6/12 months tax

Its not really a penalty, its arrears is all. Ok you pay a bit more, like 1/10 of the annual for that months as opposed to 1/12, but its not really more than if you were paying quarterly.

savagethegoat

it's a non-problem really. Pay for three month before end of July, pay 4 months after that including a very small "penalty".

The danger is a ticket from a Warden for non-display.

CiniO

Del2005 wrote: »

The SORD is to stop the people who routinely lied on statutory declarations that they hadn't used the vehicle for the last x months, therefore there's no way to avoid tax after it expires unless you add 2 owners to the VLC.

I replied last night, but I got infraction and post was deleted, as it was against the forum rules...

Anyway - I'll try different approach then.

Before law changed, as you are saying people routinely kept driving once tax expired, and lied on statutory declarations to avoid paying arrears for periods they were untaxed and driving.
Now - the reason for that was because fines for driving untaxed (in case someone was caught) were small. Usually it was just €60 fine for non display of tax disc, and a need to pay tax.

To avoid that, law was changed, and now they require declarartion in advance.
Has it helped in discouraging people from driving untaxed? - surely it did. I'm not sure to what extend, but surely it made some difference.
Difference would be even bigger, if they pushed it further, and closed the workaround of changing ownership.

But only reason that introducing declarations in advance made any difference, is that they introduced severe penalties for driving while declared off the road.

People who were not afraid to get a €60 fine for driving without tax, are now afraid to drive when declared off the road as it could attract a couple of € grand fine.

So please explain it to me - what was the purpose of making such a complicated system of declarations at all to achieve this goal?

Would it not be easier just to introduce hefty fines for driving untaxed?
That would surely discourage people from doing so the same effectively as introducing declarartion in advance did, without all the bureacratic burden which declarations introduced.

Story Bud?

They OP says the car isn't in use and is parked up so it's irrelevant.

No need to worry about being stopped for failure to display.

If you tax the car within the month of July you won't have to pay arrears.

Del2005

CiniO wrote: »

I replied last night, but I got infraction and post was deleted, as it was against the forum rules...

Anyway - I'll try different approach then.

Before law changed, as you are saying people routinely kept driving once tax expired, and lied on statutory declarations to avoid paying arrears for periods they were untaxed and driving.
Now - the reason for that was because fines for driving untaxed (in case someone was caught) were small. Usually it was just €60 fine for non display of tax disc, and a need to pay tax.

To avoid that, law was changed, and now they require declarartion in advance.
Has it helped in discouraging people from driving untaxed? - surely it did. I'm not sure to what extend, but surely it made some difference.
Difference would be even bigger, if they pushed it further, and closed the workaround of changing ownership.

But only reason that introducing declarations in advance made any difference, is that they introduced severe penalties for driving while declared off the road.

People who were not afraid to get a €60 fine for driving without tax, are now afraid to drive when declared off the road as it could attract a couple of € grand fine.

So please explain it to me - what was the purpose of making such a complicated system of declarations at all to achieve this goal?

Would it not be easier just to introduce hefty fines for driving untaxed?
That would surely discourage people from doing so the same effectively as introducing declarartion in advance did, without all the bureacratic burden which declarations introduced.

Because this is Ireland and logical easy things are never done. The simplest solution is tax on fuel, the polluter pays principle, but that isn't going to happen.

coylemj

Del2005 wrote: »

Because this is Ireland and logical easy things are never done. The simplest solution is tax on fuel, the polluter pays principle, but that isn't going to happen.

+1 If the revenue currently being collected from tax discs was instead levied on fuel so you paid based on consumption, it would redress the current situation whereby people who do below average mileage are effectively subsidizing taxis and the transport business.

It might have been a solution in times past to levy such an increase (in excise) on petrol only in order to safeguard jobs in the transport business but now that there is a huge number of private diesel cars out there, that isn't a viable solution.