Rip off car tax

[Caz]

Just got the reminder to tax my MCS for the first time. I took delivery 15 April 05 but had to pay tax for the two weeks before that (some of that time was before my car was even built according to the build date). OK, so I'm only paying about £6 more than I should have - it would have been more if I'd taken delivery towards the end of the month. However it just occurred to me how much the DVLC are making out thousands of new car owners all the time by making them pay road tax before the date that they are even officially registered as the owner of the car. Surely a discount should be available - especially if the overpayment is just short of a month? I expect someone will now tell me that you can actually claim this back but I haven't read that anywhere I suppose the other answer is to leave it at the dealers until the beginning of the next month and tax it then. Having waited 8 months in the first place for my car I wouldn't really have wanted to do that so the answer was just to pay up.

Caz

[Adrian_T]

Had you waited a week or so you would have been able to get the extra few days to give you 12.5 Months Tax from what I gather. I got mine on the 20th September and have to replace my disc on 30th September.

Mind you I would not want to wait a week extra for my new car all for the sake of 15Quid!!!

I had the Painful experience of having my car delivered into the dealers at the end of July and I couldn't afford to start paying for it until Sept. when the company car went back. One of the most painful 2 months of my life...........

[dietcokeplease]

You would think with computerisation at the Post Office that it would be easy to buy road tax and pay pro-rata for the month rather than for the whole month. I feel sorry for those people who have to pick their cars up in the last week of the month.

What this boils down to is the uselessness of the DVLA. The DVLA are a quango that aren't answerable to the people who fund them. Any change is hugely resisted by them on the basis of cost. It's always a cost issue to them to do anything. Yet they will happily break existing Data laws and sell our details to any Tom, Richard and Harry cowboy clampers.