Touting for business and touting on the neighbours

Emissions:SIMI has taken up its patriotic burden and is out spotting bad guys with UK-registered cars, writes Kilian Doyle

I HAD TO laugh at the report last week that the Society of the Irish Motor Industry (SIMI) has turned vigilante. As you may have read, SIMI has e-mailed car dealers urging them to take down the details of any neighbours they spot driving UK-registered cars so they can grass them up to the Revenue and the gardaí.

"We are sick and tired of seeing Irish residents driving UK cars on which VRT, road tax, etc, has not been paid," the e-mail said, before spitting bile about the "continued lack of enforcement". So, in apparent exasperation, they're taking on the mantle of enforcers themselves.

How noble of SIMI to issue a call to arms in the name of long-suffering taxpayers being short-changed by VRT cheats. Of course, this is a completely civic-minded endeavour. They couldn't possibly have an ulterior motive, could they?

I can see it now: lowly salesmen shuffling home from another long, fruitless, credit-crunched day of failing to shift a single car at the showroom. Dejected? Yes. Vengeful? Yes. Helpless? No. For all they have to do is swap their cheap suits for head-to-toe camouflage gear and tiptoe through gardens and poke their heads into garages hunting for yellow number plates.

The transformation from car dealer to crime fighter should be no trouble to them. Aren't they well-versed in the black arts of subterfuge and deception already?

Their task should also be easy enough. Unsurprisingly, there are a lot of VRT-dodgers out there. For the temptation not to pay is strong. In addition to the VRT itself, drivers of unregistered cars don't have to pay road tax or speeding fines or parking tickets and, best of all, are immune to penalty points, because they can't be traced.

And if they do get caught, all they do is pay up. As the car will be months older with more mileage than when they imported it, the VRT bill will be less. So they save money either way. What's not to like?

There's also the fact that VRT, which stuffs the Exchequer's coffers with over €1.3 billion a year, is an unjust swizz. Ironically, SIMI, now demanding stricter enforcement, has always had the loudest of the many voices clamouring about this fact.

Leaving aside the questionable justice of levying VRT on top of VAT on new cars, the way it is charged on secondhand cars is a complete racket.

VRT on used imports is calculated as a percentage of the estimated Open Market Selling Price (OMSP), which Revenue decrees in conjunction with the motor trade.

So, you'd think that with used car prices falling 20 per cent here this year, the agreed OMSP and therefore VRT bills on imports would be plummeting accordingly, wouldn't you? Not exactly. For it's not SIMI's role to keep the Revenue updated about the tumbling prices, as the incentive to buy used cars abroad will increase if they keep reducing VRT.

It has to be noted that Revenue vehemently insists it takes market fluctuations into account when determining OMSP. But people who know better than I about these things argue they don't do it quickly or drastically enough. The fact that they'd collect less tax if they dropped OMSP ratings can't have anything to do with that, can it?

Truth is, much as SIMI rails against VRT, the reality of its snitching campaign is that it wants to ensure people have to pay as much of it as possible when importing cars to help prop up the flagging domestic market by dissuading punters - sick and tired of paying exorbitant prices here - from taking their business abroad.

I may be wrong. Who knows, maybe SIMI has genuinely found a previously hidden altruistic streak? Perhaps it will now start grassing up those errant members found to be clocking cars, price-fixing and generally ripping off punters?

I'm not holding my breath.