Greg Mulholland – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Greg Mulholland on 2016-09-02.

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department has made of the reasons for the fall in the DVLA’s revenue from vehicle excise duty between 2014-15 and 2015-16.

Andrew Jones

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) collects around £6billion in vehicle excise duty annually and also recovers almost £30million from enforcement activities. The DVLA annual audited accounts showed a reduction in the amount of vehicle excise duty collected of £93million for 2015-16, a decrease of around 1.5% of total revenue raised the previous year. However, this figure was better than the Office of Budget Responsibility forecasts.

It is widely recognised that the amount of vehicle tax collected varies year on year. The decrease in revenue for the last financial year has been attributed to three main causes; more efficient vehicles emitting less carbon dioxide resulting in lower tax bands, over 10 million direct debits which moves the revenue across months rather than being collected up front as before and a small increase in evasion.