Car tax evasion is costing the UK government £94million a year according to latest figures released by the Department for Transport.
Though the data shows that the issue of motors without tax has dropped from 1.9 per cent of all vehicles to 1.6, there are still 634,000 untaxed cars on UK roads.
Untaxed vehicles have been at record levels since paper discs were scrapped by the government in 2014 and though the move was made to save the DVLA millions of pounds, it appears to have been a counter-productive measure with the government out of pocket to the tune of £94million in 2019 due to the car tax evasion.
With the paper discs in operation the rate of untaxed vehicles stood at just 0.6 per cent of vehicle owners. The move away from the paper disc was supposed to save the DVLA £7million a year.
Commenting on the figures, Simon Williams from the RAC said: “While it is good news that vehicle tax evasion has gone down, it is still significantly higher than it was before the tax disc was abolished in October 2014.
“To put this into perspective, evasion in 2013 was around 0.6 per cent and in 2015, the next point at which this survey was carried out, it had risen to around 1.4 per cent.
“It’s therefore hard to see that doing away with the tax disc has been good for ensuring as many vehicles as possible are taxed for use on our roads.
“This all means the Government is consistently missing out on very large amounts of tax revenue which from next year will be ringfenced for maintaining major roads in England.”