Confusion about taxing asphalt boiler vehicles
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• Insufficient publicity for budget changes, and a High Court decision which meant asphalt hailer vehicles have to be taxed as goods vehicles, were said to be the reason their operators continue to tax them at the private light goods rate of 1:150 when Charley-based Noriphalt appeared before the Liverpool City Magistrates.
The company admitted taxing an asphalt boiler vehicle at the wrong rate of duty, and failing to have a two-year tachograph calibration check.
Andrew Woolfall, defending, said that for some years such vehicles had had their own tax classification. However, following various budget changes and the ruling of the High Court in the
6 A case of Derbyshire, they were now taxed as goods vehicles. That fact had been given insufficient publicity, and operators were continuing to tax such vehicles at the private light goods rate, often on the advice of the local vehicle licensing office.
The tachograph offence had simply been the result of an oversight, said W(x)ifall. When the tachograph was inspected, nothing was found to be wrong with either the equipment or the records it produced.
Fining the company £50 for the \TED offence, stipendary magistrate Jonathan Turner said he accepted that it had been a genuine mistake. He ordered the company to pay 1:585 back duty and £150 prosecution costs, and fined it 1250 for the tachograph offence.