Say goodbye to the UK "tax disc"

... but unfortunately, not to the tax. We're still going to have pay for it, but the circle of paper proving that you've paid your Vehicle Excise Duty has finally had its day (see Sump December 2012). Instead, your details will be read by ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) cameras and by hand held devices that will tell the authorities all they want to know about who is the registered keeper of the vehicle, where it lives, if the MOT or insurance is current, and—most of all—whether the Chancellor of the Exchequer has had his wedge.

For many in the classic bike world, we suspect that the news will come as something as a blow. There is, after all, a small but steady market in tax disc holders and reproduction tax discs. Who, after all, wants to display a period-perfect-right-down-to-the-air-in-the-tyres restoration without having the correct-for-the-year-of-manufacture tax disc bolted to the forks?

Okay, a lot of us couldn't give a hoot one way or the other, except to mark this moment as another (minor) milestone in the passing of our days.

The terms "road tax" is totally incorrect, incidentally. The Vehicle Excise Duty disc doesn't pay for the roads. At least, not directly. British roads are paid for out of general taxation, and that means that the motorcyclist and motorist has no more legitimate claim to the highways than, say, the average cyclist, pedestrian or dog.

The news of the demise of the tax disc came with this year's Chancellor's Budget Statement, published today (5th December 2013). The anticipated savings were, at one point (last year), estimated to be in the region of £90 million. But it's not clear at the moment exactly how much dosh the government expects to trouser and use to either help re-balance the national deficit, or throw away on charitable aid to countries like India that can afford to go mucking around with rockets, but can't afford to feed its hungry citizens (or is that comment too simplistic and not worthy of us?).

Either way, this is the same chancellor who's been busying talking up the UK economy and telling us that happy financial days are just around the corner.

But we digress. The tax disc is dead. Long live the ... well, you know how the rest of that goes. The change comes in October 2014.

— The Third Man

Copyright Sump Publishing 2013