MARTIN LEWIS SHARES HOW DRIVERS COULD GET ONE YEAR FREE CAR TAX IF THEY ACT BEFORE MONDAY

Martin Lewis has urged owners of electric vehicles to check if they can get one year's worth of free car tax ahead of major changes in 2025.

The Money Saving Expert (MSE) website founder shared the advice in his MSE newsletter this week and urged drivers to check if they could take advantage of the hack. The post read: "Urgent. Electric vehicle owner? Check NOW if you can get FREE tax for another year.

Martin wrote: "Urgent. Electric vehicle owner? Check NOW if you can get FREE tax for another year. If you've got a zero-emission car, van or motorcycle first registered on or after 1 April 2017, and your 'tax' is due to start on 1 April (or 1 May in some cases), you can delay paying electric vehicle tax till 2026."

The newsletter then linked to the MSE page which explained the hack further. The MSE page explained millions of drivers are exempt from paying vehicle excise duty (VED) – more commonly known as car tax or road tax - until April 1 2025. The move to tax electric cars aims to make the system of tax more equal for divers according to Chancellor Jeremy Hunt.

However, there is a way of delaying this so you will not need to pay the fee until April 1 2026.

Under the rules, new zero emission vehicles registered on or after April 1, 2025, will be liable to pay the lowest first year rate of VED which applies to vehicles with CO2 emissions from one to 50g/km. From the second year onwards, they will move to the standard rate, with any EVs first registered between April 1, 2017, and March 31, 2025, also paying the standard rate.

To get a year's free tax, drivers of electric cars should renew the tax before Monday 1 April 2024, so this coming Monday. You should then do the same again before Tuesday, April 1 2025. Doing this means you'll push back the deadline for paying tax on your EV back to when it's next due for renewal in the final week of March 2026.

However, the MSE team explained you can only do the hack if your electric car was registered on or after April 1 2017 and your tax on it is due to start in April 1 2024 - or 1 May 2024 in some cases. The MSE team added: "As the earliest the DVLA allows you to tax your vehicle is the fifth day of the month your current tax expires – so if it expires 31 March, the earliest you can tax it again is 5 March."

If you are taking part in this hack, it's important to remember that even though electric car owners do not need to pay VED on their cars until 2025, they do still need to tax them, or they could be fined.

2024-03-29T12:38:15Z dg43tfdfdgfd