Tax Exemption or Not

keanej

keanej

New Member
Our classic friendly Govt has rejected the rolling 25 year petition

Therefore the Government’s position remains that further extension of the exemption for classic cars would be inconsistent with its overall policy intent, which is to give rates an environmental focus.

The exemption for cars built prior to 1973 should therefore be viewed as an exceptional concession, and the Government does not believe there to be a sufficiently compelling argument for extending it.

See full post here http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page22640

Obviously written by Eco Warriors who don't understand the classic car scene.

Perhaps we should petition them to move it 3 years so at least it includes all P6 cars
 
No surprise there then, bunch of proverbial's!

Didn't the Conservatives promise to re-instate the rolling tax exemption in the last elections if they had got in?
 
The problem with the historic tax class is that it wouldn't take much from the government to make a restrictions on the times/days that historic cars can be driven on the road, such as the case I'm led to believe in certain other European countries. I've read that in Germany you need to notify the authorities in advance that you intend to use your car when and where :shock: , and one other country (not sure which one) allows something like 20 days usage per year :|
 
To be fair, pre december 1972 is tax exempt and good... that suits, can you recall the toot that was on the road in 1985!!! Montegos. Maestros, BMWs, Metros, tonnes of Jap and foreign crap!! blah blah blah ..... bar big Jags, I think the govt have got it right ... cars got uglier as the years went on ... a tax exempt Micra, stick that up your Japs eye!!

If you want exemption restore an old British shell and put in modern running gear!! God bless England, long live the English!
 
If you take a classic shell and add modern running gear you'll lose the tax exempt status, the powers that be frown on the whole frankensteining movement. I think they should move the exemption forward. I'm thinking about 1980 to be the cut off. If you look at it closely the whole eco thing would fall into place as the "cost versus" argument of buying new or "recycling" the old stands up in it's own right. We all know the ins and outs of it here, but as we also know it has absolutely nothing to do with eco this or the other it's purely about number 11 getting as much money out of us as possible in whatever way they can. If somebody could present this case to them in a way they thought it would benefit them we'd all be ok. Overall the whole situation needs to be looked at very closely by all the historic vehicle clubs and movements and a unified front presented in a politician friendly format, but I fear this doesn't have any hope of materialising any time soon. I hope I'm wrong though.
 
You should realise that you are really really lucky that you have the tax excemption, even if it stops at 1973.
As Simon said, almost everywhere else in the world, there are severe restrictions on classics.
Over here if you want to declare your classic as tax exempt, it has to be over 30 years old, strictly in original factory and very good condition (no projects), and you get special registration plates so that you can be easily noticed, and ... you are allowed to drive it only in the days that a classic car club has organised an event. Also you are allowed to move it to and from a garage for service. Thats it! Oh, and the icing in the cake is that you have to prove that you own a private parking space to keep the car in. You are not allowed to keep it on a public parking space (i.e. roadside!) since you don't pay road tax.

For 2010 i paid almost a month's wages in road tax for the Rover and the Austin. And both are pre 1973! That's why i am saying that you are lucky in this subject.
And to be honest, the petition for a rolling 25 year tax free status was never realistic. A far more better approach would be to ask for a rolling 35 year or up to something between 1975 and 1980. This would cover the vast majority of the owners in the classic car circles.
 
TwinPlenum3500S said:
If you want exemption restore an old British shell and put in modern running gear!! God bless England, long live the English!
Click to expand...

The big stumbling block there is the DVLA points system:

Chassis/bodyshell 5 points
Suspension 2 points
Axles 2 points
Transmission 2 points
Steering Assembly 2 points
Engine 1 point

These points are awarded for original spec unmodified components/assemblies, and to retain the original registration/identity, you must score 8 points or more. The problem, as a lot of people are finding out now is the DVLA are clamping down on modified vehicles that fail the points system. You will lose the 5 points for the bodyshell if you modify the bulkhead or tunnel in any, which usually accompany and engine and transmission swaps, leaving you with only 6 points. This means BIVA, which costs £450, and you lose the original identity, and the car becomes a 'new' car in the eyes of the DVLA, so no free road tax.

I would rather pay road tax (or is it fictitious emmisions tax now?) and have the right to drive when and where I want than have further restrictions/costs imposed on me for choosing to drive an older car, whether it is 100% factory spec original, or a heavily modified custom car.

Freedom has a price :?

As for the petitions website, I get the impression all it does is lets people think they can change the world by sitting in the comfort of their own homes behind the computer screen with a few clicks of the mouse :roll:
 
sowen said:
I would rather pay road tax (or is it fictitious emmisions tax now?) and have the right to drive when and where I want than have further restrictions/costs imposed on me for choosing to drive an older car, whether it is 100% factory spec original, or a heavily modified custom car.

Freedom has a price :?
Click to expand...

I'm with you on that one Simon.

I'd be quite happy to pay for the pleasure of driving my classic car everyday and everywhere whenever I wanted. I'm sure that if our govt was to start telling us when and where and what type of cars we could drive.....

Did you know that in China, because of congestion on the roads in the bigger cities, only cars with odd numbered plates can be on the road on certain days and even numbered plates get the other days........

.....someone would cry "human rights violation" and that we were being denied our freedom of choice which is an essential part of any supposed democratic society....

God Bless Democracy! :LOL: :LOL:

Dave
 
Personally, I'm happy if it stay's pre-73 as that's where my auto-interests mainly lie, you could say this is a selfish outlook & I'd agree with you. :wink:
The only thing I would change is that any model of car being manufactured before this date would get the free tax as the situation of some P6's, 5's et al...getting exemption & others not is rather silly.
And the risk of restriction forever looms over us, not so much from our own Government as the un-elected euro-nannies of Brussels or Luxembourg, whichever they're occupying in at the moment. :roll:
 
Personally I think this whole argument could be avoided if they just scrapped road tax all together and added it to the fuel duty.
I am yet to hear any resonable argument why we shouldn't do this. You can check insured / MOT status online now, so the argument of proof of insurance / mot is void.

It would fulfill the alledged "green" issues, by further discouraging road travel, and saving the printing of millions of discs, it would prevent tax "dodgers", and it would allow us to own as many cars as we wanted without huge cost implications, i.e. you only pay when you drive it, which is the only fair way.

Won't be long before all P6's become "tax exempt" anyway, the number of obviously non-exempt cars running with exempt chassis numbers is huge.

The DVLA points scheme is largely a joke, when was the last time you had your car examined ?, MOT don't even look at engine numbers etc, and then at what point does the car become not the original car, you replace the diff because it breaks, 2 years later the gearbox, 2 years later the engine, then they say it's not the original car. The system is in place to prevent people rebuilding written off new cars from bits of other new cars and selling them on.

The petition website is a total waste of time, it is just there to placate the public, they don't take any notice of any of the results, virtually every petition gets a "thanks for your votes but we're not changing anything" response.
 
It's not a case of losing the points if you change the engine/gearbox/axle, you only lose the points if you change to items that are not original. Normal maintenance is not a problem if you replace like with like. Also if you do have to have the car inspected and it fails on the points quota it will be re-registered with a "Q" plate.

Although all of this legislation has been in force for years, it is being enforced now because the Government are skint, and hence they are looking at VOSA to bring in as much cash as possible. You are likely to see VOSA pulling up cars as they are leaving car shows in the very near future, having a quick look, and if they have any suspicions telling you that the car needs a BIVA, whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do about it. Guilty until proven innocent! I've seen all of this before with Breakdown Trucks, initially you were left alone to run on Red'n'Whites, but slowly they started bring in more and more legislation, which they then enforced with a vengeance.
 
harveyp6 said:
It's not a case of losing the points if you change the engine/gearbox/axle, you only lose the points if you change to items that are not original. Normal maintenance is not a problem if you replace like with like.
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Only if the replacement items are new. Fit a brand new engine, axle, chassis, etc. of the same spec and it still earns its points, but if it's a secondhand one it does not.

harveyp6 said:
Although all of this legislation has been in force for years, it is being enforced now because the Government are skint, and hence they are looking at VOSA to bring in as much cash as possible. You are likely to see VOSA pulling up cars as they are leaving car shows in the very near future, having a quick look, and if they have any suspicions telling you that the car needs a BIVA, whether you like it or not, and there's nothing you can do about it.
Click to expand...

Not quite the same thing, but I just heard of someone entering a modified car show and spotting someone at the gate photographing all the cars as they drove in. Other owners told him it was an insurance check, and sure enough he got a letter from his insurers a week later asking about the undeclared modifications to his car (he'd fitted a stupid great bonnet bulge to it).
 
Hi,

New or original to the car was certainly my understanding to when it comes to this point system but since the only parts with unique numbers tend to be the chassis, shell, base unit or whatever you want to call it and the engine, how are they going to identify a second hand like for like replacement? Gearboxes do tend to have serial numbers but these aren’t recorded on registration documents so aren’t likely to be checked?

The whole area is a bit of a minefield, my car was an auto, now a manual so I lose the points for the gearbox but also I’ve had to drill a hole in the bulkhead to fit the manual pedal box, does that constitute “modified”. I say not but the guy in the white jacket might just disagree with me.

Tim
 
Willy Eckerslyke said:
harveyp6 said:
It's not a case of losing the points if you change the engine/gearbox/axle, you only lose the points if you change to items that are not original. Normal maintenance is not a problem if you replace like with like.
Click to expand...

Only if the replacement items are new. Fit a brand new engine, axle, chassis, etc. of the same spec and it still earns its points, but if it's a secondhand one it does not.
Click to expand...

I don't think so, because even when the cars were new, and I was working on P6's at that time, engines, gearboxes and axles were all supplied reconditioned and fitted by the main dealer on an exchange basis.As said elsewhere, apart from engine numbers there's no way to prove whether it's original or not, and seeing as the cars this applies to are 38 years old minimum, how many are going to have matching numbers. I would be surprised if there are many, so that would reduce the number of tax exempt cars to virtually zero. Luckily enough mine still has the original engine, but the LT77 would lose me the points for that. The chassis/base unit is a different matter though, because that's where the numbers, and hence the identity, of the vehicle is. Going on to the topic of modifying that, and the drilling of a hole to change from auto to manual, it's the position of the hole in that instance that is the problem, as it's on the bulkhead. Holes elsewhere are slightly different, in other words, if you can't drill holes without having the car inspected, that means no seatbelts, radios or mirrors if they weren't fitted as standard, and how can you prove when a hole was drilled. All of mine were done on the PDI. :LOL:
 
Sorry fellas, I'm a bit confused on this one. I agree with Twin Plenum and Webmaster on the tax issues above but why are people suddenly worrying about registration and points consideration? If the MOT man doesn't care and any mods are declared to the insurers then whose to know what's original or not?
 
testrider said:
Sorry fellas, I'm a bit confused on this one. I agree with Twin Plenum and Webmaster on the tax issues above but why are people suddenly worrying about registration and points consideration? If the MOT man doesn't care and any mods are declared to the insurers then whose to know what's original or not?
Click to expand...

That's quite true, until you're unlucky enough to come into contact with them for another reason, say a cherished registration transfer, or a VOSA checkpoint.
 
As some one who only drives the P6 every now and then, it does annoy me that I'm paying £185 a year ( actually its in bits & Sorn'd at the moment so its not going any where ) and it does seem daft that some one with an identical but 12 month older car gets it free.

Plus I'm paying £185 for the Jag plus another £185 for the day car - At least the P4 is free and the one I use the most.

I would suggest moving the cutoff date to 1977, which would cover all the P6, Triumph 2000, Landcrabs models, stretch it to 1980 /81 and you include the MG's, Maxis's but not all Allegros and Marinas.
 
I hate to say this, but I do have some sympathy with the governments stated position in using car tax as a blunt instrument to control emissions. Who here can claim they wouldn't be tempted to use a tax free car as a daily driver in preference to having a second modern car? Do we actually have a right to have a free hobby?

In my view any future government of whatever hue is likely to clamp down on big engined inefficient motors. Count our blessings!

(and yes, I am a strong advocate of looking at the whole life carbon footprint and not just looking at fuel!)

Chris
 
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