Tear Along The Dotted Line

This is not an instruction to drive quickly down the road-markings which separate two lanes.

I'm glad that I spotted this Telegraph story today because it means I can maintain my record of five posts per calendar month this year.

The story is about how the DVLA is running out of the thick-ish paper that they print Tax Discs on so they are printing some of their own on thinner paper without the easy-tear perforations.

This is on the back of the news that the media have just noticed that Tax Discs will no longer need to be displayed on or after October 1st this year.

This is mildly irritating to me.  My disc expires on 30th September.  This means I probably won't be sent one of the new, thinner, unperforated discs that they talk about in the Telegraph article.  This is a shame because there is always someone sad enough to collect unusual ephemera like that so I could have put it on e-Bay after it expired and cashed in on its historic value.

 

The article also goes on to say that many motorists are unaware of this change and that there is a serious danger that anyone buying a car after October 1st will need to arrange tax straight away because no tax disc means no transfer of the duty paid along with the car.  Hopefully the seller will be refunded any remaining monies as is the current system when you send the disc back to the DVLA.

 

Although I am one of the 58% of motorists (according to the AA survey quoted in the Telegraph) who did know it was happening (check out my post from last December) I didn't know the start-date or the implications for car buyers.

 

Or the implications for people who make tax-disc holders - don't buy any shares in these...

Disc Breaks

or should I call it "Tax Brakes"?

No, this story is about tax discs not disc brakes.

I'm not sure why George Osborne announced that he was scrapping the Tax Disc this afternoon.

Because everyone knew that it was happening this morning - along with the rest of his Autumn Statement.  The BBC had it here.  Autocar had it here.

They used this picture.  That registration number belongs to a Range-Rover.  I wonder if it was just parked outside their offices or it belongs to a member of staff there - it isn't the one that comes up if you look for a review of a Range-Rover on their site.

The BBC have also used this as an excuse to bring back their occasional (and amusing) RIP item with "R.I.P. Car Tax Disc".  These sometimes prompt amusing tributes from the readership - I await these in mild anticipation.

What the scrapping of the discs doesn't mean, though, is the scrapping of the tax.  That will continue to be collected and the Police will have access to the databases which tell them who has actually paid - although your average traffic warden or nosey neighbour won't be able to easily tell.

The tax itself is "vehicle excise duty" not "road tax".  I make this point because this comes up every time anyone mentions tax discs - it comes up a lot in the comments at the end of the main BBC article.  Cyclists generally make this point a lot.

I am an occasional cyclist myself but very much take the Jeremy Clarkson point-of-view on this: