UKC

A bought a car in November 2024 which had a tax disc dated until 31/1/2015. I'd heard that you would not need to display a tax disc from October 2014 onwards but had not realised that the tax is now not transferable when a car is sold and the previous owner is refunded.

In my ignorance I waited until yesterday to renew only to discover that I wasn't taxed for the period between November and now and have comitted an offence as the car was not declared SORN. I am very happy of course to pay for the intervening period and want to avoid a fine. It was completely inadvertent but I guess ignorance isn't a defence.

Has anyone else been caught out by this and what happened?

In reply to Escher:

Not caught out, but was sure my van's tax ran out last November (haven't used the van since having my daughter in the summer). Went online mid Nov to re tax it, only to discover it had actually run out in June!
Thankfully it let me buy the tax (once I'd also sorted out the expired MOT) with no penalty, even though like you I'd happily have paid if necessary.

In reply to Caralynh:
Did you not get some sort of notfication that your tax had run out?

In reply to Escher:


was it a Delorean?

In reply to higherclimbingwales:

Ha! If only!

In reply to Escher:

I by accident did not tax my car for about 3 months before now. I was panicking, but in the end I had to go to a central tax place rather than the normal post office but it was fine I just paid for the gap and the remaining three months or whatever, and didn't have a fine or points or anything. This would be about four years ago now so whether things have changed I can't comment.

In reply to Escher:

Its normally best just to declare SORN and then just drive around anyway. Mrs Num Num and I normally get a year and a half out of our Micras. One of the advantages of this approach is it also extends the MOT period and smooths out the peaks and troughs of our wonga.com payments