M3 driver nabbed for no motor tax

[S50-touring]

My car, flashed up on unmarked garda car apnr that was parked just before mondello

€160 impound fee and €60 tax fine on the way in the post. Car is back home now.

I'm not here to argue the right or wrong of it I'll just say if the rates for these cars we're a bit more reasonable more of these would be taxed.

My wife is going to buy it now and throw a bit of tax on it she said.

[Eoin]

Ive had a few Gaurds point their mobile phone at me at checkpoints and just wave me through as everything is up to date!
Im assuming its an ANPR app!

[philb]

what s50 says, if the rates were not so extraordinarily punitive, the govt would be making more money and a lot of people would be less stressed.
its easy to see why owners take the chance for these cars which in many cases are rarely driven.
add to this the vast swathes of cars which are taxed on co2 in other European countries and the uk, but purposely on cc here. It's been like this long before any green agenda arrived, more driven by SIMI lobbying in fact.
and mostly goes to pay water tax. It shows this country in a shoddy light.

[mikerd4]

Tbh if I had no tax on a car I wouldn't be driving near mondello on the day of a big motorsport event. The roads are always swarming with gardai when those events are on given how many make their way to them

[peadar]

What's the deal with it being SORN'd officially and caught on the road? Anyone caught like this?

I had a car lifted before because it was out of tax 14 months, only in my name a month, the guard at the time said if it was declared off the road I'd be getting arrested for the offence.
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[AMGE34]

When i bought my M3 two years ago, it was out of tax for over three years. Two weeks after I bought it, I booked it in to get the subframe reinforced with Dave Gormley in Wexford. As I knew the car was going to be out of action fot the best part of a month, there was no chance I was taxing it.

So i ran the gauntlet from Cork to Wexford only to get stopped at a check point in Dungarvan. I remember sitting there as he waved each car ahead one by one, thinking how the hell am I going to get out of this one(visions in my head of just flooring it). I could see the disbelief in the Guards face when he saw the 2017 tax disc. I reckon he must have got the jump the night before, because somehow I managed to get away with just a warning. I made sure it was taxed coming back the other way though and haven't driven it without tax since.


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[Gn3dr]

The high tax in this country has always been a pain in the hole. You'd getter better enjoyment out of just burning the money. My tolerance level was €710 for a 2 litre for a while but I moved up to a 2.2 for a few years and while I loved the car I hated the tax so it was sold at a time when just couldn't justify it. My tolerance level now is well below €710 mainly because of the post 2008 "cheap tax" stuff. For a daily it is just a waste of money when there are cheaper alternatives out there.
That's why all the cars I have that have large engines now are classics.

What I don't understand though is why people buy yokes like M3's etc if they are not going to tax them?
I just don't think driving around in a car with no tax is worth the hassle of looking over your shoulder every time you want to drive the car. It must take any enjoyment out of owning it.
If you can afford the car you should be able to afford the tax. I can't so I play in the zone that I can afford ( well that's what I tell myself - but really - who needs more than one car )

[Cold]

On the other hand, selecting a car based solely on its tax is quite sad as well. That’s like letting the man win. And I’m not big on the man winning. Some dude who wants an M3 is entitled to skirt the system a bit and it seems in reality is that the fines aren’t that big so not that big a deal if things go south. But of course the tax is utterly daft seeing as practically nobody pays it all year round or at all. I think the only saving grace is that it hasn’t been increased for years and the 10% inflation will effectively reduce it over time.

[kdevitt]

What I don't understand though is why people buy yokes like M3's etc if they are not going to tax them?

Because you can get away with it? Two months out of date and they'll generally do nothing - three months off and three months on is perfectly doable, especially with the SORD system being online- its even easier than getting 'da form' stamped.

I'm generally law abiding, and pay a lot of tax - but don't like being ass raped for owning a large engine car (owning - not using - I take the train to work!) Never felt an minutes guilt about applying my own discount - it still worked out at over a grand a year.

[Smokey Bear]

The high tax in this country has always been a pain in the hole. You'd getter better enjoyment out of just burning the money. My tolerance level was €710 for a 2 litre for a while but I moved up to a 2.2 for a few years and while I loved the car I hated the tax so it was sold at a time when just couldn't justify it. My tolerance level now is well below €710 mainly because of the post 2008 "cheap tax" stuff. For a daily it is just a waste of money when there are cheaper alternatives out there.
That's why all the cars I have that have large engines now are classics.

What I don't understand though is why people buy yokes like M3's etc if they are not going to tax them?
I just don't think driving around in a car with no tax is worth the hassle of looking over your shoulder every time you want to drive the car. It must take any enjoyment out of owning it.
If you can afford the car you should be able to afford the tax. I can't so I play in the zone that I can afford ( well that's what I tell myself - but really - who needs more than one car )

I was stopped by a guard a few years ago and he was telling how much of a terrible person I was for not taxing the car in a year or more. I lost the head with him and asked him was he living under a stone with how ignorant he was about the running costs of something on the higher tax bracket. By the end of the conversation he understood that the tax is a small part of the cost and ultimately VAT generated on keeping a car like that right and the taxes raised as a result of fuel duty far outstrips the motor tax. He left me without giving me a fine and seeing a different side of the coin.

As Cold said, if you let tax rule you then maybe you should just give up. It’s a pity our leadership sees tax as a way out of doing something productive.

[Jimmy Taybag]

I paid €1490 for the year on the Aristo a couple of months back, because it's a daily driver and the only thing that could be worse would be 4 X renewals totalling €1700 odd over the course of the year. I only have to feel physically sick once this year and have moved on.

After the nausea subsides then the tax is just an annual running cost, part of the TCO and it's not a surprise. And for me depreciation is negative currently, fuel is not a massive cost even at 15mpg because I no longer have to commute. So a big tax car can be relatively economical to daily in certain circumstances.

And it's a car I hop into most nights just for a half hour spin to listen to boosty noises. #priceless

Stressing about having half the discs missing and looking over my shoulder would take all the enjoyment out of owning a car but each to their own.

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[Rochey]

I paid €1490 for the year on the Aristo a couple of months back, because it's a daily driver and the only thing that could be worse would be 4 X renewals totalling €1700 odd over the course of the year. I only have to feel physically sick once this year and have moved on.
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Fair point, if they split the cost evenly by 4 rather than increasing it on quarterly payments then maybe people would tax it more often.
It's a daft system.

[dimitri]

If the tax is checked at checkpoints only then it's extraordinarily unlikely to get checked. I can't remember the last time I saw a checkpoint. I could well imagine driving for a year without getting checked.

This also applies to agri diesel

[davkav]

I paid €1490 for the year on the Aristo a couple of months back, because it's a daily driver and the only thing that could be worse would be 4 X renewals totalling €1700 odd over the course of the year. I only have to feel physically sick once this year and have moved on.

After the nausea subsides then the tax is just an annual running cost, part of the TCO and it's not a surprise. And for me depreciation is negative currently, fuel is not a massive cost even at 15mpg because I no longer have to commute. So a big tax car can be relatively economical to daily in certain circumstances.

And it's a car I hop into most nights just for a half hour spin to listen to boosty noises. #priceless

Stressing about having half the discs missing and looking over my shoulder would take all the enjoyment out of owning a car but each to their own.

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I'm in the exact same boat. It is sickening the cost of tax but I knew what I was getting into when I bought the M3. What's the point in owning a big engine car that you can't push on every now and again without the fear of getting pulled with no tax.

The system is so backwards. I toyed with the idea of putting the M3 on my classic policy, changing the policy to her name and me becoming a named driver on her car and the classic's. The mk2 golf is now only €56 tax a year so if stuck for the second car, I could take that one out. But that also means I could only drive the M3 for 6 months of the year or whatever I decided to tax it for, and I didn't buy it to look at it in the garage. The problem with that is, I'd lose my 10+ years NCB after a year of not having a policy.

Fair point, if they split the cost evenly by 4 rather than increasing it on quarterly payments then maybe people would tax it more often.
It's a daft system.

This is robbery, and I was sickened when I went to tax it for 3 months so that I could assign funds to a few fixes to the M3. I ended paying for the full year as I couldn't justify giving them even more money for nothing.

[Gn3dr]

It all adds to the case of putting the tax on the fuel. Then tax is based on use and not on ownership, there is no need to have checkpoints for tax so maybe the Gardai might be able to go concentrate on crimes and the like , and also the civil service could lay off a load of admin staff from the motor tax offices , saving another great wad. ( And the type of person who works in those offices really is a special type)