I was thinking that a good few years ago one of the overland o/d’s made a claim for a refund of his uk road tax and used the tolls and taxes he had paid whilst in Europe as being unfair, because he was paying twice and the foreign hauliers were not paying anything to run in the UK.
I’m just looking at cutting costs in any area’s that I can, so as not to pay the bloody Government anymore than I have to, so if anyone’s got any info on whether this still applies, please advise.
I do seem to remember a transport company in the 90’s that didn’t tax their trucks because they used to stay in europe got fined a large amount and told they must be taxed wether in the UK or not.
There’s no such thing as ‘Road Tax’ the disc in your windscreen is a vehicle excise license, it has nothing to do with paying for roads but a legal tax levied on the vehicle.
I seem to remember reading about Astrans only taxing their units to run without trailers. This meant they had to get other hauliers or they had a sort of UK based shunter who delivered goods in the UK and took trailers to the docks. Even if it meant that the truck that was taking it across to Asia had to follow it to the docks.
Obviously there are a lot of myths built up around Astrans, so I can’t guarantee how true this story is.
Derf:
There’s no such thing as ‘Road Tax’ the disc in your windscreen is a vehicle excise license, it has nothing to do with paying for roads but a legal tax levied on the vehicle.
Very true, but it’s known as Road Tax in the common parlance so Road Tax it is, even if it’s technically incorrect.
I was thinking that a good few years ago one of the overland o/d’s made a claim for a refund of his uk road tax and used the tolls and taxes he had paid whilst in Europe as being unfair, because he was paying twice and the foreign hauliers were not paying anything to run in the UK.
I’m just looking at cutting costs in any area’s that I can, so as not to pay the bloody Government anymore than I have to, so if anyone’s got any info on whether this still applies, please advise.
Regards
JJSL
What you pay in the UK is a vehicle tax. What you are paying abroad are road user charges. The two things aren’t connected.
Roads in the UK are free to use, apart from a few bridges and tunnels, parts of the London road network at certain times* and the M6 Toll. You pay a tax on the vehicle you use on UK roads and you pay a tax on the fuel for those vehicles but you don’t pay to use most of the road network. You would only pay for those bits of the UK network that do levy a charge when you actually used them so you couldn’t really claim you were paying twice as you wouldn’t be using roads on the mainland at the same time.
*There may be other places that have a similar charge to London but I don’t know if there are.
Many thanks for the time taken to reply and I’m just sorry that no one knows if there is a loophole somewhere.
I remembered the O/D it was Chris Hooper and an article appeared in one of the trucking magazines saying that he had been to court and they found in his favour, and accordingly, he received a refund.
But this was a long time ago and the legal position may have changed.