SORN scam 883

said:

I've always thought the purpose of laws was to protect people from each other. Therefore, it's illegal to speed because it puts other people in danger, it's illegal to dodge your tax because that makes it more expensive for everyone else, etc.

That makes it entirely reasonable to find people using cars without tax, insurance, as they represent a danger (or burden) on everyone else. SORN does not appear to do anything to find these people - unless they are extremely foolish or forgetful. After all, the villain only has to declare his vehicle is scrapped once, not each year.

It's not quite so clearcut that someone who has, for example, an old MG in a barn which has been stripped down to a chbuttis and may well never be used on the road again, depending on how the restoration goes, is creating a danger to others when their SORN declaration one year is lost in the post. For me, they don't seem to be doing anything wrong, yet this is the prime market for SORN fines.

When I think of the same issues treating SORN as a sort of tax, it all makes excellent sense and is set up in just the way I would do it to maximise the tax, i.e. relying on two different civil service* groups to get things right and blaming the punters when they don't.

(* - all right, technically the PO isn't one any more, but they still manage to be unreliable and paperbound.)