| LATEST NEWS |  | | | FEATURES | | | | BUSINESS | | | | SAINTS | | |
|
|
|
Tax slur retracted
 |
| An old tax disc are you road legal? |
BARELY three weeks ago the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee claimed, in a very well-publicised report, that nearly 40 per cent of motorcyclists were evading the payment of vehicle excise duty (VED). Now, in a remarkable and embarrassing turnaround, the latest Department for Transport (DfT) report on VED in 2007 estimates that a more believable 6.5 per cent of motorcyclists evade VED.
David Taylor, chief executive of the Motor Cycle Industry Association (MCIA) said: "The motorcycle industry has said for years that the methods of calculating VED evasion were deeply flawed, but we have been consistently ignored. In fact, we still say that the methodology is wrong.
"Although the latest figures are more believable, it's only the way data is collected that's changed."
He continued: "The DfT should be embarrassed and should apologise to the vast majority of powered two wheeler (PTW) riders who clearly do pay VED."
In recent years the DfT has claimed that anything up to half of all PTW users are evading road tax.
Now PTW users have been largely vindicated by the release of findings from the latest 2007 DfT survey.
The results, based on detailed photographic (ANPR) analysis of the vehicles surveyed, rather than the previous reliance on the jottings of people sat at the roadside, shows that only 6.5 per cent of PTWs seen on the road did not appear on the DVLA's record of taxed vehicles.
The increased use of ANPR reveals that the number of motorcycles evading payment could be just one-third of the figure previously claimed by DfT while the revenue lost from non-payment has been just one-fifth of the amount DVLA have consequently been trying to chase.
An independent report commissioned by DfT in 2007 identified several problems with the estimate of evasion among PTWs, but the investigation was discontinued by DfT before concerns could be addressed.
The MCIA and other motorcycle organisations have challenged the DfT figures for many years, yet both the National Audit Office and House of Commons Public Accounts Committee have recently accepted the results without giving adequate consideration to their accuracy and validity, finding it all too easy to publicly criticise PTW users as being likely to evade VED payment.
As well as unfairly maligning PTW users, the pressure on DVLA to tackle a far higher level of evasion than actually exists means that large amounts of public money have been spent chasing revenue that was never being lost.
David Taylor finished by stating: "There will always be a small minority of PTW users evading road tax and, as with the far higher number of car tax evaders, this should not be tolerated by those who do pay."
4:59pm Tuesday 19th February 2008
Print 
Email this 
Comment
What are these links for?
If you liked this article and would like to share it with others on the web who might be searching for good content we've made it easy for you to do it.
At the bottom of all articles, you'll see links to six sites. These sites - commonly called 'social bookmark' or 'social news' sites - have large communities of web users who share and rate interesting, useful and fun things on the web.
Clicking the links will automatically add the address of the story you are reading to one of these sites, letting you share it with others. Each site will ask you to register to share stories. Registration is free and once a member, you can store, recommend and search for stories that interest you.
More on Digg
More on del.icio.us
More on Furl
More on reddit
More on NowPublic/
More on Yahoo!
