By Law if a car is being used or is parked on a public road or highway then it is required to have road tax, which is more commonly known as Vehicle Excise Duty or Road Fund Licence. If for whatever reason your car hasn’t been used for a certain period of time and it is being stored off the road some place, maybe in a garage or the driveway of your home, In this case you will need to inform the government or an automatic fine will be levied on you.
Fortunately, it’s the easiest thing you can do, and this process is called declaring a vehicle SORN (Statutory off Road Notification). Once a SORN is declared on your car there is no requirement to pay the road tax or even have your car insured. One thing to keep in mind is never drive your car once you have declared SORN. If for some reason you are found driving that car on the road then you could be levied with some huge fines and could possibly have the car seized.
Luckily, you don’t need to stand in those long queues at the Post Office or fill in that plethora of forms. Now, you can declare a SORN car online at any time and that to all in a few minutes. if for some reason you are restricted access to a computer, you can also carry out the process over the telephone or by Post as well.
Once you have SORN’d your vehicle, A refund cheque of any Road Fund Licence fee you are owed for unused months will be sent to you by the DVLA. As mentioned earlier, please don’t be tempted to declare SORN if the car is still being driven on the road or parked. If the vehicle is spotted then most likely it is going to be seized.
For your car to qualify to be SORN, then it must be kept either in a garage or private. When you need to use your car again it is quite easy to un-SORN your car. More on how to SORN and un-SORN your car is mentioned below.
If you own your own car and are a regular commute, If your car is untaxed and uninsured it is against the law. To make sure all cars in the UK are accounted for and nobody is missed, the government of UK decided to change the rules so car owners must themselves legally declare if they are not going to be using a car if it is not taxed and insured.
The DVLA basically knows and has a track of your car If it is uninsured or not taxed, so for whatever reason if your car is not taxed and uninsured then we advise that you take it off the road immediately and declare a car SORN to the DVLA.
If for some reason you fail to declare a SORN, then the DVLA also knows whether or not and when your road tax has expired, they can cross-reference data with the national insurance database to find out which vehicles have valid cover and which vehicles do not.
If you do not have any valid cover for your vehicle, the DVLA will assume that your vehicle is off the road and you have failed to declare SORN.
If so, The DVLA will send you a warning letter, if for some reason you fail to see the letter or if you fail to take action, you will receive an automatic fixed penalty as a fine which will be issued to you by post
The fine is £80 only if your road tax has expired which can be reduced to £40 if paid within 28 days, and £100 if your car is uninsured.
If you fail to pay the fine that has been issued to you, you’ll be facing prosecution in court, once it reached the court, there is a chance that the magistrates could raise the fine even further to £1,000 – plus all the additional court costs whatever they might be or what the magistrate decides.
The DVLA is not obliged to send you a warning letter. They can directly issue the fine.
