I'm hoping to collect my 'new' bike tomorrow (a massive 125cc of raw Chinese power!) and it's taxed until mid year. Should I send the tax disc back as I've no intentions of insuring said heap for a while? Im not after relaunching the row about how Sorn and compulsory insurance is a pain by the way...
Yes... send it back. The money is better in your pocket than the government's. And, as I understand it, if it's taxed it has to be insured - if it's on SORN it doesn't need to be. Someone will probably correct me if I'm wrong...
That's my interpretation too, that it needs to be insured to be taxed. It just seems stoooopid returning a tax disc for what may be a month, may be 4, to get less than £8! It'd cost £4 to go to the post office when I DO retax it!
You are correct JR45I could not be arsed to cash my tax disc in for a month and a halfs worth but cancelled the insurance. I got a letter telling me to insure it or Sorn it or get a fine
That's a bit of a pain. For a £6 refund - £0.60 stamp for paperwork. £5 for petrol (seeing as local POs don't do tax discs anymore!!), £0.60 to park at the po. Net result - 40 bastard pence profit! Marvelous. What shall I blow that on??
As it's a couple of weeks before the end of the month, I can't see that you need to do it urgently by visiting a post office? You can do the SORN bit online, and at the same time print out the refund form: https://www.gov.uk/apply-for-tax-disc-refund-form-v14 then send it off 2nd class to DVLA and wait for the refund to come back in the post (I don't know whether they can pay it directly into an account - it's receiving cheques and being nowhere near a bank that annoys me). You can buy the new disc onlne when you want it - personally I use the post office to give them the business but that's just because I can walk to a small one that still does tax discs. As well as the real threat of being done for having no insurance if you don't SORN the bike, even if it is locked in a garage, which goes against natural justice in my view, you also need to get the sequence right when you put it back on the road - it's insurance, then MoT, then tax (assuming MoT has run out while laid up that is). These days the insurance companies will claim that your policy is invalid (or at least not fully valid) if you don't have an MoT (but you are OK on the way to and from the test, assuming that the bike is roadworthy enough).
As said before, if its not insured you are required to surrender the tax. I believe it's ok to simply declare it SORN but you will only get the balance of the tax back if you return the disc It's a way of getting around the trick of insuring a vehicle, taxing it then cancelling the insurance.
No - it's a way of finding something else to punish people for, and to make money out of. The DVLA/police systems these days have no problem in checking a vehicle registration number automatically for insurance, tax and MoT if it is being driven on the road. The days of a tax disc (which as we know is due to be scrapped) in any way "proving" possession of insurance and MoT are long gone.
As has been said - you can download the form for claiming the tax back from DVLA's web-site. It does take up to six weeks for them to send you the money back though...
