Express & Star

LETTER: No reason to change system

A reader discusses car tax.

Published
A car tax disc.

I can’t have been the only person back in 2014 to have raised an incredulous eyebrow at the decision to scrap the necessity of having a clearly visible piece of paper on your vehicle’s windscreen indicating that you have paid the necessary road tax duty for your runabout to be legally on the road.

It shows a complete lack of understanding of the wily nature of humans for some pen-pushing civil servant to decide that it is now superfluous to have such a visible indicator now that the world has been taken over by computerised gadgetry, and a car’s legality can be checked at the touch of a few buttons.

So what? We can all check cars at the roadside in a millisecond with an even better computer, our brain, linked to our eyes, and so can a policeman.

The chickens are now coming home to roost, with over 700,000 untaxed vehicles on the road and a revenue loss, almost certainly never to be recovered, of £113 million to the Department for Transport.

Sometimes perceived progress needs double checking, something which parliament clearly overlooked here, though I doubt if anyone in a position to do so will have the common sense and good grace to admit to such a monumental error and put wheels in motion to reintroduce the old well tested system.

Clive Potts, Bilston

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