Motor Tax stole a week from me....

Motor tax is monthly, no? 01, 02, 03 etc.

The exact date doesn't matter.

Motor tax is monthly.

There is no paying for part of a month.

It is always due from 01st of a month and expires on the last day of a month.

OP, you haven’t been done out of anything.

I really don't understand in this day and age why our windscreens are clogged up with up to three ridiculous sized paper discs for Tax, Insurance and NCT.

Number plates can be scanned by Gardai in their cars to see if tax has been paid. They should add insurance and NCT to that therefore take out whole lot of admin and get rid of discs and save a few trees in the process.

You could report the accident to your insurance with just the other driver's reg number in the exact same way, and they'd instantly be able to identify the other person's insurer. Anyway the insurance disk is only one of the three. Other than when buying a car, most people don't need to know someone else's NCT or motor tax status. So even if we kept the insurance disk and dropped the other two (you'd still have the certs to show when selling the car), it would be a 2/3 improvement.

I guess the assumption would be that when removing the 3 disks from the window, there would be some alternative way of getting all this information. If for privacy reasons they didn't want to implement a reg number lookup for the general public to access, an alternative could be a simple QR code that you display on the windscreen or reg plate that you could then scan on your phone and would lead you to an online service that displays all the details. No different from accessing the information that's publicly displayed on vehicles currently. The QR code could even be assigned to the particular car for life, and the ownership and compliance data just updated centrally, so no need to issue the code yearly. Many other countries don't have disks on the widows. The UK started phasing out the tax disk in 2014, but they never had a requirement to display Insurance or MOT.

But if the system was changed to being linked to the reg plate of the car then you wouldn't need the disc photo in the first place. Just no need for them. People manage this just fine in other countries.

Also, no need to call Gardai for minor road accidents either, never understand why people do that, block roads as well as if it's a major crime scene that needs preserving for forensic examination.

Just move to the side, exchange details and sort things out. If one acts the maggot then get reg plate photos.

The reason we didn't is because of the poor outcome seen in the UK, at least in the first few years after the change.

As you may be aware, the abolition of the motor tax disc took effect in the U.K. from 1 October 2014. In that jurisdiction, a vehicle excise duty evasion survey is carried out on a bi-annual basis. The results of the survey carried out in 2015, the first following the abolition of the disc, found that the rate of unlicensed vehicles observed on the road was much higher than had been observed in the previous survey in 2013, prior to the abolition of the disc. The survey concluded that the increase was probably due to the changes in the vehicle licensing system which took effect from October 2014, which included the abolition of the disc. The 2017 survey, published on 16 November 2017, found that the rate of unlicensed vehicles observed on the road had increased since the 2015 survey.

Having the discs on the window make progress at Garda checkpoints quicker, quick glance and a wave rather than sitting waiting with questionable WiFi on a computer result

Lol. Personally I'd call that a success.

I don't see why? Car is registered to an owner and address. The registration records if taxed or not and you prosecute/fine people who don't pay.

It's very simple.

Lived in Netherlands, car tax paid online linked to registration. I don't see how a disc offers anything that an accessible database doesn't . We don't have to copy stuff that the UK does or think their failures would be failures here.

Strange how people only see problems and not solutions. If they change the system then they will have to buy more equipment costs probably be offset by admin savings with paper discs.It's not just about Garda cars having ANPR but access to a database.

The point is to shift away from the gardai looking for people who do not pay their motor tax which is a complete waste of Garda time in my opinion but let the department prosecute non payers.

So with your car registration it is recorded if taxed, insured and NCT (if required) if not then you are pursued. This is how it works in other countries, where you never see police checkpoints checking for motor tax. Checkpoints focus on more important things like drink driving, seatbelts, car safety etc,.

I really don't understand in this day and age why our windscreens are clogged up with up to three ridiculous sized paper discs for Tax, Insurance and NCT.

That is what you posted, and to me it is you who is making a problem which does not need a solution. Your solution would need to be cost benefit analysed, and you are just making a guess about that. Even if it becomes the solution, it won't stop some people breaking the law.

I don't pay much attention to people who claim to know a lot about what happens in other countries. Even if they lived abroad, I don't see any reason for them having much more than a passing knowledge of motor taxation anywhere else. Same as I have for Ireland. Unless they worked in motor tax administration, or road policing.

You would be better to research that yourself, as you could get wrong answers here. This website is a good place to start.

https://www.ndls.ie/licensed-driver/renew-my-driving-licence.html

Thanks. I was hoping to hear from someone with recent experience as I find that timelines set out in government websites are not always 100% accurate.

Checkpoints checking for tax,NCT, insurance along with increasing compliance are a useful way for the Gardai to be seen policing without getting too many peoples backs up, the guard gets a good whiff of the inside of the car when you lower the window so it's a handy way to catch the random drug/drink driver.

Problem with any new system in this country is some crony will have to get a bailout and the system will likely be obsolete or a donkey to use,

Again this is a dated mindset in my opinion.

First of all there are hardly any checkpoints of any description. Before Covid I'd only come across one checkpoint in about 10 years. That changed with Covid where there were plenty of checkpoints to check people's movements and it worked. They didn't bother checking tax NCT etc.

This proves that checkpoints can be done and give a sense of policing.

Secondly as random breath checks are now legal they don't need a reason to check you or to use pretense of checking tax to get window wound down and smell the car.

Just set up random checkpoints and check people with breathalyzers. Simple, done in 30 seconds and I can't imagine any compliant driver would have an issue with it so they don't have to worry about getting people's backs up.

There should be more of them imho as people driving intoxicated is a bigger issue and far more dangerous than people having valid discs in their windows.

Thanks. I decided to go online yesterday to renew my licence. I was told I had to have a MyGovID account, so I registered for this. It asked for my licence details so that I could register straight away, but my licence was issued before the new system came into force, so I had to ask for a PIN to be posted to me. Hopefully, this will arrive before Christmas.

Whether I actually manage to get away in January remains to be seen.

Remember AH in the good ould days ????

Any proof to back this up about fictitious addresses and names?

How would they get the vehicles insured then? As any insurance company I deal with ask for proof of address.

Therefore if the system was fed into by insurance companies then you could have a system that captures all cars that are uninsured , not taxed or registered correctly without need for any discs or Gardai checking windscreens.

Not the original subject. And only a few people have ventured an opinion. If tax discs was the subject of widespread public objection, or even concern, there would be plenty of online discussion. Maybe there is in the Motoring forum, I haven't looked. As I said a solution for a problem that does not exist.

So now it's all anecdotal. What proof do you see unless it's in your line of work?

People who are commiting fraud as you describe would be a very very small minority.

Either way in the last two years I have changed car insurance and I had to verify identity and address.

Ok, but I still don't see how having a disc in the window will change anything that you are talking about but I still believe that the vast majority of people have legit cars on the road fully insured and pay for their petrol