Adrian The theory behind SORN is (relatively) sound. People were month-skipping on tax - Tax disk expires end March, new one bought start May. "Nah, it was off the road". Yeh, right.
But SORN can't stop them doing this - now they can declare SORN for the month instead.
The purchasing of a tax disk was the only check of insurance, mot, V5 legitimacy. If the tax is missing, what else is? So - they tighten it up, by making it a little more difficult to skip a month.
SORN scam 870That is the bullpoo the authorities would have you believe. What really happened was when the first ANPR systems started running, the DVLA database was found to be grossly inaccurate (the...
But as you have said earlier, it's very easy to comply with, so determined month skippers will see SORNing to save money as trivially easy.
The only trouble is - like cameras - it relies on people to be basically law-abiding. They'll "forget", but they won't actively lie. Unfortunately, not everybody's like that. So you get a rise in clones, in cars with missing V5s, with missing owners. The only ones that get fined are those who are fundamentally law-abiding but forgetful or badly organised.
Which means that the *only possible* victims of SORN rules are those that have otherwise legal vehicles. The real tax dodgers are outside the scope of the whole SORN system, proving that it being aimed at tax evasion is an outright lie.
-- Rob
