Paphos People

Taken from cyprus mail
No grace period for non-payment of road tax
By Elias Hazou
OLD HABITS die hard: some 20 per cent of motorists failed to pay their road tax this year, despite repeated calls to the public not to leave it to the last moment.

The high default rate meanwhile has invited a re-think of the scheme, which some want scrapped altogether.

State coffers get around €80 million a year from the levy, but several millions are lost through unpaid road tax; there are growing calls for state revenues to shift to fuel duties instead.

The government has long been veering toward a pay-as-you-pollute scheme, but temporarily shelved the idea after opposition from parties and private industry.

“Abolishing road tax should be part of a broader bid to establish a fairer, simpler system that is based on the principle ‘I pollute, I pay’. It’s an extremely important issue to us,” Transport Minister Nicos Nicolaides told reporters yesterday.

A re-think of traffic taxation policy was inevitable, he added, because soon Cyprus would be forced to raise its fuel levies anyway.

Last year the government managed to secure from the EU a deferral on increasing fuel taxes.

The Transport Ministry has already begun troubleshooting, and the matter will be “brought back to the table” before year’s end, said Nicolaides.

“We shall be looking at the data to see what steps we can take to end this seepage of state revenues, which are so necessary under the present circumstances,” he added.

Without road tax, the state estimates it could save €7 million in administrative costs, but the change would leave a €50 million shortfall that would have to be covered from other sources.

Soteris Kolettas, head of the Road Transport Department, said that road tax for 2009 had been paid for only 500,000 out of a total of 640,000 registered vehicles.

From its database, the department takes it for granted that some 80,000 motorists default on their road tax every year, for various reasons. But that would still leave some 60,000 vehicles above the anticipated quota this year.

“Of course, there is no telling how many of these 60,000 vehicles are still in circulation, as some cars may have been taken off the streets,” Kolettas said.

Despite this high default percentage, he said authorities had decided against granting another grace period to errant motorists.

“Police checks will intensify, and as of today any driver caught without road tax will be fined,” Kolettas warned.

The good news was that only a tiny fraction of payments are now made at the offices of the Road Transport Department, eliminating long queues; almost 98 of payments are now carried out online, banks or the Citizens Advice Bureau.

Meanwhile tickets for drink driving went through the roof during the weekend festivities. From Friday through Monday, police carried out 2,875 alcohol tests; in 163 cases, or six percent, the driver was found to be driving under the influence.

Demetris Demetriou, head of the police’s traffic department, called the situation “alarming,” and took the opportunity to remind the public that drink driving is the number one cause of road fatalities.




Copyright © Cyprus Mail 2009

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REACH 1000`s of PAPHOS CUSTOMERS EVERY DAY FOR A FRACTION OF WHAT THE OTHERS CHARGE
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Whilst the optimist and the pessimist argued that the whisky glass was either half full
or half empty ? .
I drank it .....
The opportunist..

I agree that in all countries the collection of such taxes is difficult to impliment and sometimes difficult to justify to the road using population. However one way or another we all have to pay. I am in favour of a small levy on fuel prices.

HOWEVER the concept of must also be applied to other aspects of daily life as well, such as industry, commerce, house warming devices and in particular, catering facilities which produce all sorts of nasty outputs.

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Straight talking, no Gimmicks.

Live your dreams.