Vehicle tax a shower thought to pass sometime.

[Alphabet1spaghetti2]

Just received my reminder - all good no issues.

but I wonder if anyone can answer a conundrum? On the letter it states you must tax your vehicle even if its rate of tax is £0. But there isn’t a box for that option.

So if you do have a zero rated car —- do you get a £0 rate box to tick?

Yes.

If you do it online you eventually get to the amount to pay, which is zero (so you don't pay anything). And then you get sent the confirmation of the tax.

Yes, you still need to tax the vehicle, even if there isn’t a fee to be paid, you can be fined if you fail to do so, it’s easy to do online.

Thank you all!! It is interesting that the database has been programmed well, so it doesn’t waste ink printing all the bracket prices for every vehicle and is up to date with what each individual vehicle emissions are. Fascinating.
and thank you for indulging me in some distraction time.

Yep, quite a lot of people have got caught out thinking nil rate tax means they don’t have to annually tax the vehicle.

My car is zero tax rated and I do it online as normal, there’s just no fee to pay at the end.

And yes, I got caught out the first year - didn’t read the reminder properly and assumed as it was £0 I didn’t have to do anything with it.

It's the same with tractors and other agricultural vehicles - they are a nil tax but still have to tax them every year - I was caught out several years ago as I thought I didn't need to - was a rather uncomfortable conversation with DVLA if I remember along with a shit tonne of photos and evidence to prove we did still have the actual vehicles 🤦‍♀️ managed to avoid being fined though......

@whojamaflip i hadn’t thought about agriculture vehicles as being zero. That’s a good debating point for school!
I wonder if emergency services vehicle are zero rated. An internet rabbit hole.

Its like your tax return... if you are eligible to fill one in, but forget, you still get the fine even though you owe no tax.

@PuttingDownRoots good anaolgy! Now I’m curious if people ignoring the need to do it, brings in enough money to pay for the outlay in sending zero vehicle tax reminder letters…..!!

Yes, emergency service vehicles are nil rate.

As are one vehicle that’s used for a pip higher rate mobility recipient. 50% reduction for lower rate mobility pip.

historic vehicles (over 40 years from first reg.)

I presume even with nothing to pay it's still confirmation that you've got the requisite mot and insurance

@Bumply i pay my tax over the post office counter , they didn’t ask for copies of mot and insurance. I think the last time I showed those would be a good 20? years ago. You can check online via a gov.uk site that your mot and insurance are up to date and set a reminder for mot, so I would suggest that they already know those details without needing zero rate vehicles (or any) to confirm.

it’s a small factor in our lives but suddenly very interesting!

My car is £0 car tax but I still
Have to log on a pretend to pay my car tax every year. Find it all a bit bonkers

I had a car not so long ago that was £20 or £30 for a year's tax, but you could pay in monthly installments.

I always paid mine in one go, but I did wonder if anyone bothered to pay monthly - which cost a tiny bit more.

It's because doing the zero cost car tax dance triggers the check that you have both insurance and a MOT in order to qualify for the car tax you're not having to pay for. Your car tax renewal date is the one date it's confirmed that everything is in place.

Well this was informative. I didn't know that either and DH is thinking of getting one so good to know.

I've read it many times but can't understand your thread title, what does it mean?

I read it that this thread is ‘to pass some time’, discussing ‘vehicle tax’ after @Alphabet1spaghetti2 had ‘a thought’ about it in the shower

Or whilst in the shower they had been passing some time thinking about vehicle tax

You could be right, I've not heard the phrase shower thought before, is that commonly used?

When you register online to pay, set it up to pay an annual Direct Debit and then it'll automatically renew every year even with £0 to pay.

Not really. The system is designed to be ready for when vehicle tax costs are increased. The zero rate band won't exist forever and sooner or later, cars currently paying no vehicle tax will become chargeable. Better to have the system designed and written to be future proof rather than having to re-write bits of it when the zero rate turns into £50 then £100 etc as the years pass.

I don’t think that I’ve heard it as a phrase, but have many times heard ideas that were a result of ‘I was thinking in the shower’

I work with the Army in a headquarters. We often have young thrusting staff officers passing through at particular points in their career and will have ‘an idea’. This varies from something just thrown out in a meeting to show they are paying attention to being the impact that they wish to make for that tour in role

@BarcardiWithGadaffia and @tommika

shower thought - a random inconsequential passing thought. A thought which just randomly pops into your brain when you aren’t really actively looking honking about it or looking/thinking for an answer to a problem.

was waiting on some news which we thought was going to be bad and I needed a distraction to stop me from falling apart. Which it has temporarily.
News was bad still fell apart, but for five minutes everyone helped distract me from this shitty rollercoaster day.