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Car tax refund following bereavement?


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Are the DVLA refunding car tax
or is that on hold because of the Covid restrictions?

I contacted the DVLA last April using the "Tell Us Once" service but have heard precisely nothing.
The car in question is sold and is on the road (so has been licensed).

It is a mute point because their website confirms they issue refunds by cheque made out to the registered keeper,
which means, even if I receive a cheque I cannot pay it into my mother's current account because the Clydesdale Bank don't allow such,
but I thought I'd ask anyway.

 

thanks,

Ian.

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You should have got a refund. The most foolproof way is to declare it SORN and they then refund to the bank account you paid from. The same thing should happen when you declare it sold with any full months of tax outstanding refunded. How that works if it was paid by cheque at the post office I really don’t know.

I can see all kinds of pitfalls in the case of bereavement...... 

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Thanks Nick,

last year I had to renew my driving licence,
there are three ways to do this but only one was available to me,
which was the paper application. This took from April until September.

( The other options were to go online but I don’t have a passport
or apply at a Post Office that handles applications but the nearest was
beyond the COVID travel limit and this wasn’t an essential journey because 
the paper option was available.)


I was able to sell my late mother’s car through a car dealership,
the dealer informed that the DVLA were not issuing new documents
which of course means that they had acquired a massive backlog by the time
restrictions were lifted.
It is of course possible that they are still to process refunds, I am thinking
collecting tax will be their priority

 

 

Ian

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The DVLA was allegedly functioning semi-normally in the second half of last year. They certainly weren’t doing their staff any favours......

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/31/dvla-managers-failed-to-understand-severity-of-deadly-covid-outbreak
 

Seem to be following the central government model of maximum disruption and minimal disease control.

I had the V5 through for my A8 within a week in early October.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Well I have contacted the DVLA through their website and received a very prompt reply.

They can find no record of a notification of my mother's death but have given me instructions
for what to do next,
which is simply of writing to them to confirm what I said in the email and to also
include details of who the refund cheque is to be made payable to.
Their current time for dealing with such is 6 to 8 weeks.

 

thanks,

Ian

PS I had informed them using the "Tell Us Once" online service

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The old “we have no record”.......

Strange organisation the DVLA. Areas of excellence and areas of indifference with little middle ground. Things that you can do instantly at the tap of a screen, next to other things that they will only action manually, by post, that take weeks.

I’d be more impressed with the “tell us once” service if it didn’t randomly exclude some matters. (Cloned reg, some aspects of private plate transfer)

Anyway, good luck with your endeavours!

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Just this morning I had a "problem" with DVLA.

We have taken on my MILs Honda Jazz (I must be getting dull, I quite like it around town) and insured it earlier in teh month. But for tax reasons we were going to transfer it into our name last night. But no, you can only do that 7am-7pm. So we sorned it on her behalf so she gets teh refund for march onwards.

This morning, I do teh change of ownership online. Easy.

Go to tax it. No way. Says by phone or at the PO. I get on teh phone, 10 mins of recorded messages later and a few button presses, it asks for car details. At which point t tells me no, has to be done at the post office. 

So a trip to the PO, and in a minute it was all done. But why can't you retax a car online immediately in such a situation? Madness.

Ian, we are still sorting my parents stuff, about to send off mums premium bonds. But the number of times we have to fill in forms that look suspiciously like the ones we returned a couple of weeks earlier makes it feel like groundhog day. But we are almost done and dusted. Much to my kids delight (to be fair, they do miss their grandparents, but at the same time we all appreciate they would have been extremely "difficult" and cantankerous if they had lived through this pandemic. A small silver lining I guess) 

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Something about not being able to tax a car online within 5 days(?) of it being declared SORN.

DVLA system automatically provides the refund to the previous owner when the online “sale/transfer” is done, so they probably consider the need covered. Or it would be if it worked 24/7. Hadn’t realised it doesn’t. Another curious anomaly to add to the list.

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I wonder if he V5C for my mother’s car hasn’t been issued to the new owner?
It might be in a pile of correspondence still to be processed or simply lost?
I am sure the new owners would have used a PO to tax the car.

The rest of the “Tell us once“ has worked just fine.
The DWP replied  very quickly and dealt with the paperwork 
(which had to be posted to them) equally efficiently.
HMRC, who I had to phone for advice, were very helpful indeed.

On the other hand, the Clydesdale Bank can’t be accused of having been
helpful. In fact I made so many complaints against them that their Complaints Team 
complained about the number being large.
In the end  I insisted in lifting the money from the local branch in cash.

 

Ian

 

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I had a lot of trouble with the bank (Nat West) when dealing with my Grandmothers estate. I was never sure if they were being deliberately obstructive or were merely deeply incompetent, but they seemed to invent new forms to be filled in every time I thought I was winning. In the end, as my 4th visit was about to end without progress, I had a “bring me the manager RIGHT NOW! :mad:” moment.....

Things did start to happen after that but I was happy to close the account at the earliest opportunity.

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Nick, you've just triggered one of my pet frustrations. Given that most people have a bank account and that most people die and many now get dementia, their processes for all of them to respond effectively and constructively to executors or attorneys is in my experience definately deeply incompetent, if not hostile. And if you want to open an Executors Account, well, just whistle on. HSBC are the only bank who would do so in my experience and after the inevitable complex account opening procedures provided an excellent service afterwards. Better stop this rant now though.

Miles 

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14 minutes ago, MilesA said:

Nick, you've just triggered one of my pet frustrations. Given that most people have a bank account and that most people die and many now get dementia, their processes for all of them to respond effectively and constructively to executors or attorneys is in my experience definately deeply incompetent, if not hostile. And if you want to open an Executors Account, well, just whistle on. HSBC are the only bank who would do so in my experience and after the inevitable complex account opening procedures provided an excellent service afterwards. Better stop this rant now though.

Miles 

My parents, and indeed me and my sister, have had midland and later HSBC accounts.

We had to open executors accounts, at least I think they are actual executors accts. They have really long names eg "clive senior + sister as exectutors for...." and they had to reduce the length (which was dictated by solicitors)

Anyway when we opened them we handed the grant of probate and all teh other required paperwork over. And were categorically told their old accounts would be closed and funds transferred. Ideal. 

Roll on a month, house still not sold and we were about to start paying interest on the IHT bill. So nipped ito HSBC, to be told the accounts had zero balances. The cashier shrugged their shoulders and said "I dunno" at which point I got angsty.

The cashier manager appeared, took me to one side and asked what was going on. I explained what we were told about the transfer, she said that was not the case. And we needed the grant of probate again, and fill stacks more forms. insisted it was what we had been told, and obviously f that wasn't the case, why would we has purposely left the money in accounts we could not access. At which point she blurted out the fatal words "that is your word against ours". A mushroom cloud appeared above my head, but I asked to see the branch manager as I wanted to complain about the way we were treated, and to get the matter resolved as she obviously wasn't capable. But we filled in teh forms, and returned later with the GoP. We also made it clear we would hold HSBC responsible for any costs associated with their incompetence.

Upshot next day branch manager called me. VERY apologetic. Turns out the lovely lady who set the executors accounts up was in training, and would normally be supervised (so why was somebody qualified not sent to deal with us?) The dragon who muttered teh your words etc bit had been tasked with fast tracking the transfer, normally 2 weeks but would be done by the end of the day, and she would be contacting e to confirm. Yes, HSBC would pay any expenses. And also made a compensation offer, which was accepted and passed on to a charity.

When I went back into the bank, the dragon seemed to be my new best friend. Couldn't do enough to help (through gritted teeth) and all was resolved. 

I could go on, but teh above has been cathartic

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Sounds familiar. Repeating the same process multiple times with small variations. My revenge was setting up the executors account with Lloyds.... with whom I have banked for many years. Remarkably they have managed to not significantly annoy me in the 35 years of our association.

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