OK, I’m sorry for using the word “e-government”. It’s not even a proper word. But I was moved to use it because I just paid my UK car tax online and it was a suprisingly simple, hassle-free process – it took less than five minutes from start to finish, a far cry from how it used to be done.
In the old days, renewing your car tax meant schlepping down to a post office clutching your precious documents, and queuing with (and possibly even talking to) other humans while you waited to be served. How very 20th Century. (Not every post office was able to renew tax discs, so you couldn’t just go to the nearest one, you had to find the nearest right one. Groan.)
Now, it couldn’t be more different. When your car has an MOT, the results are recorded in a central computer database and a unique code is printed on your car’s MOT certificate. When your car tax reminder arrives in the post, all you have to do is go to www.vehiclelicence.gov.uk, enter the codes from the MOT certificate and the reminder, whip out your credit and it’s job done. A couple of days later your tax disc arrives in the post and it’s job done quicker than you can say “Don’t make me go to the bloody post office again.”
I have two super-minor gripes. The £2.50 surcharge for credit card payments was not made clear before selecting the credit card option, though it was pointed out before the payment was taken. And the card expiry date drop-down menu had dates going back 4 years in the past. Useful if Dr Who’s carrying an old card and he wants to renew the tax on the TARDIS, though.
I don’t know whether this new system is also designed to help the government track down the ne’er-do-wells who avoid paying road tax. The best solution to that problem would be to scrap road tax altogether and increase duty on fuel. That way, it would be impossible for anyone with a car to avoid paying, and it would keep the Greens happy because car owners be taxed the more they polluted.
And ultimately, it would save us all a small fortune because the government wouldn’t have to run all these online tax-collection systems, no matter how slick they are. It’s not e-government we want, it’s less government.
Comments on this entry are closed.