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The Motor Tax office in Kilkenny. Shane Elliffe

Tax offices inundated with motorists ahead of ‘off road’ deadline

Minister Phil Hogan has told vehicle owners that once the stamp of their application is prior to 30 September, they will be deemed compliant.

Updated 11.21pm

TAX OFFICES ACROSS the country have been inundated with motorists today ahead of the deadline which changes the way vehicles can been declared ‘off the road’.

Queues are running out the doors of offices in Dublin and elsewhere as the 1 October date approaches.

From that date, all drivers will have to declare in advance if their car will be off the road for a lengthy period of time.

Previously, vehicle owners could explain a gap in their motor tax cover by saying that their car was in repair or storage for the time it was not covered – once they had received sign-off from a member of An Garda Síochána. However, no check to ensure the truthfulness of the claim was required.

It is estimated that the Exchequer loses about €55 million a year to drivers who drive without tax for certain periods.

In the 12 months to end-July 2012, there were 539,000 garda-witnessed declarations made. While the Department of Transport believes there are genuine cases, it suspects there was “widespread abuse” of the loophole.

“This level of evasion of motor tax is unfair to the majority who do pay their motor tax conscientiously,” it said when notifying the public of the change.

In a case where a person declares a car off the road but is subsequently discovered driving it, potential sanctions include fines and convictions for making false statements, as well as existing penalties for non-display of a valid motor tax disc.

A changeover period from July to 30 September had been given, so next Tuesday is the real deadline. From now on, vehicles cannot be declared ‘off the road’ for a period shorter than three months.

In an update this afternoon, Minister Phil Hogan said he was “aware that a certain amount of last minute activity” has arisen from the change.

“Once the initial change is in place the process will be very straightforward – motor tax is either renewed or the vehicle is declared off the road in the month before tax, or a previous off-road declaration, is due to be renewed,” he said.

He also noted that “anybody whose application to declare a vehicle off the road is received in a motor tax office by close of business on Monday, either by post or submitted in person, will be deemed to have complied with the deadline in the legislation, even if the form is in some respect incomplete or incorrectly completed”.

“Applicants will be contacted over the next few weeks to rectify the forms. Postal applications postmarked on or before 30 September will be regarded as having been received by the deadline.”

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First published at 10.45am

Related: Drivers will have to declare cars as ‘off road’ before tax runs out

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170 Comments
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    Mute Get Ta France
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    Jul 11th 2011, 6:14 PM

    Roll on 2moro!!!!!! Can’t wait!!

    97
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    Mute Feargal Garvin
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    Jul 11th 2011, 6:28 PM

    I hope he means ‘metaphorically’ and not ‘literally’.

    68
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    Mute Paul Driscoll
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    Jul 11th 2011, 7:31 PM

    Would be a lot more useful if these idiots tackled countries such as China, Iran and Burma that restrict free access to the Internet. Suppose it’s not newsworthy though.

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    Mute Collie Woods
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    Jul 11th 2011, 8:40 PM

    They have recently. Iran was hit by op anti sec. Government departments.

    So there.

    26
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    Mute Collie Woods
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    Jul 11th 2011, 8:42 PM

    You won’t here about it with mainstream media. Try arstechnica.com or wired.com

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    Mute gareth byrne
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    Jul 11th 2011, 9:35 PM

    can they transfare funds into ecb to bail out italy.since the rest of europ is broke.

    24
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    Mute Richard Keogh
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    Jul 11th 2011, 10:45 PM

    I’d prefer if they transferred out of the ECB into Ireland seeing as they’ve screwed us over for the last few years.

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    Mute John Mack
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    Jul 11th 2011, 10:56 PM

    and all across the land IT staff plugged out their modems at home just in case, the work ones can wait till after coffee.

    17
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    Mute Nigel Kenny
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    Jul 11th 2011, 7:22 PM

    Non starter. No-one in Anonymous has any skill beyond SQL injection and DDoS attacks.

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    Mute Mike Reid
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    Jul 12th 2011, 10:25 AM

    They do this to show that big fancy businesses can’t even protect from basic attacks such sql injection or ddos attacks and we’re supposed to trust them with our details.

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    Mute Gis Bayertz
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    Jul 11th 2011, 8:04 PM

    Just criminals

    15
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    Mute Trevor Nolan
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    Jul 11th 2011, 11:42 PM

    …as opposed to unjust criminals? I agree!

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    Mute mr g
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    Jul 12th 2011, 1:06 AM

    Can’t wait to see what they do! Fair play to them exposing the flaws in Internet security. It’s the ones that sneak in and say nothing you need to worry about

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    Mute chrissy
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    Jul 11th 2011, 11:21 PM

    It’s just someone with an agenda
    Spoilists if such a term exists.
    Brilliant brilliant minds used for mediocre purposes.
    Why don’t you try famine, disease, dictatorships etc etc
    Attack them, if you win ……. the world wins
    God bless you and help you to make the right decision

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    Mute fizi_water
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    Jul 12th 2011, 8:22 AM

    Because they don’t have Internet? :-) To be serious, all this hacking is not directed at “who”, it is way more often directed at “viable of doing or not?”. Of course there is extra pride and hype amongst hacker groups if they manage hit something big. But reality is they always look for weak targets and easy points first and then just narrow down more and more to select something attractive. In other words, they hack what they can, not necessarily what they would like to.

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    Mute Jamie Dunne
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    Jul 15th 2011, 12:04 PM

    Guys… anyone know what a false-flag attack is ?? …9/11 … the government / powers that be are gearing up to shut down the web as we know it… and reboot with a new COMPLETELY CONTROLED & CENSORED Web.. …using security fears / blaming hackers for there actions…
    Must Watch >> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HDwsslGcC4w

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