Check If Your Car Is Taxed, Free

Type the registration number into the box at the top of this page and press the check button. Spaces do not matter. The result appears on the same page, and a typical record shows:

• Tax status: one of Taxed, Untaxed, SORN or Not Taxed for on Road Use.
• Tax due date: the date the current tax runs out, when the DVLA holds one for the vehicle.
• Vehicle details: make, colour, fuel type, engine size, year of manufacture and month of first registration, so you can confirm the record matches the car in front of you.
• MOT status and expiry date: shown alongside tax because the two are often checked together.

Always compare the make, colour and year on screen with the vehicle itself. A single mistyped character in a registration gives you a different car’s record, and a clean tax result for the wrong vehicle is worse than no result at all.

A status on its own is only half the picture. The due date and the other fields on the page change what you should do. These are illustrative examples with invented dates, not real vehicles.

Consider the second row more closely. A seller advertises a car as “taxed until the end of the month”. The check confirms it, and the due date is three days away. You agree to buy the next morning. Because tax is not transferred, you would need to tax it yourself before the journey home, so the “tax” in the advert gave you nothing at all. A buyer who understood this would arrange the tax at the same time as the insurance, before handing over the money.

Now take the third row. The status is Untaxed, the due date is last month, and the MOT panel shows an expiry two months ago. The two problems are linked. As the next sections explain, an expired MOT can stop you buying tax online, so the order of work is MOT first, then tax. Run the MOT check to confirm the expiry date and book a test before attempting to tax the vehicle.

If your own vehicle shows as Untaxed, work through these steps in order:

1. Stop using it on the road. Driving or parking an untaxed vehicle on a public road is an offence. If you are not going to use the car, declare a SORN instead of leaving it untaxed.
2. Check the registration and the record. Make sure you entered the right reg and that the make and colour match.
3. Look for a recent change. If you bought the car recently, the previous keeper’s tax does not carry over, so the record may simply show that it needs taxing in your name.
4. Tax it through GOV.UK. You can tax a vehicle online through the official service. Have your V5C log book or the reference from your tax reminder to hand, and the vehicle’s MOT must be valid if it needs one (see below).
5. Recheck. Once the DVLA has updated its record, run the tax check again and confirm the status has changed to Taxed. Keep the confirmation for your records.

If you think your car is taxed but the check says otherwise, do not assume our result is wrong. The data comes straight from the DVLA, so contact the DVLA with your payment details and sort it out with them before you drive.

People often run a tax check and an MOT check together, and the two records do interact. Vehicles that need an MOT generally have to have a valid one before they can be taxed, because the DVLA checks MOT status when you tax online. If the MOT has run out, you will usually need a new test before the tax can be renewed.

This is why a car can fall into an untaxed position through an expired MOT even though the owner meant to keep paying. If your tax check shows Untaxed and the MOT status is also not valid, fix the MOT first. Use the MOT check to see the expiry date and the MOT history to see what failed previously. Our guides on driving without an MOT and how early you can get an MOT explain the timing rules, including when a test keeps your existing renewal date. Some vehicles do not need an MOT at all, as set out in our list of MOT-exempt vehicles. Remember that tax exemption for historic vehicles follows a different rule from MOT exemption, so a vehicle can be exempt from one and not the other.

Vehicle tax is a legal requirement for any vehicle used or kept on a public road, unless it has been declared SORN. Paper tax discs are no longer used, because tax is recorded electronically against the registration. That is also why a check by registration is the reliable method: the record is the proof. Automatic number plate recognition cameras are used to identify vehicles that are untaxed, so an untaxed car being driven is more likely to be noticed than many keepers expect.

The penalties for being untaxed are set by DVLA and can change, so we do not quote amounts. What we can say is that an untaxed vehicle can lead to enforcement action, including fines, and that the safest course is always to tax the vehicle or declare it SORN before the due date. Read the current rules on GOV.UK vehicle tax.

Insurance enforcement works separately. Under continuous insurance enforcement a vehicle needs insurance unless it has been declared SORN. The registered keeper of an uninsured vehicle that is not SORN can get a £100 fixed penalty, a court can fine up to £1,000, and the vehicle can be clamped, taken away or destroyed. The keeper must still pay for the insurance.

Tax status is one of the quickest checks to run, and it frequently exposes a gap between advert and reality. Use it alongside the rest of the buying routine. Our used car checklist sets out the order. The seller claim checker compares an advert against the official record, and the compare cars tool puts two candidate registrations side by side. For the test history behind the MOT status, open MOT history and read it with our guide to how to read MOT history.

A tax check is useful, but it answers a narrow question. It does not tell you:

• Whether the vehicle is insured. Tax and insurance are separate. A taxed car can be uninsured, and an insured car can be untaxed. If you want to confirm insurance, you need a different check or a conversation with the keeper and their insurer.
• Whether the right amount was paid. The record shows status and a due date. It does not tell you whether the vehicle was taxed in the correct band, and it does not show what was paid.
• Who owns or keeps the vehicle. No keeper or owner details are available through the free data, and we never display them.
• Whether the vehicle has outstanding finance, has been stolen or has been written off. Those checks are not part of the free official data, and our reports do not include them either.
• Whether the vehicle is roadworthy. A taxed car can still be unsafe. The MOT record and a physical inspection tell you far more.

It is also a snapshot. The status is correct as of the DVLA’s latest data. If someone taxes or SORNs the vehicle a moment after your check, the result will not show it until you check again.

People often look up a registration that belongs to someone else: a car they are thinking of buying, a vehicle parked outside their home, or a car they have just been sold. The tax check works for any registration, because tax status is a fact held on the vehicle record rather than personal information. You will see the status, the due date and the vehicle details, and nothing else.

What you will not see is who the keeper is, why a vehicle is untaxed, or how long it has been that way. If a vehicle outside your home is untaxed and has been left for a long time, the result is useful evidence of its status, but the right step is to report your concern to your local authority or the relevant authority, not to approach the vehicle yourself. If you are buying, the status is simply one input into your decision, and the remaining checks in our used car checklist still apply.

• VED: vehicle excise duty, the formal name for vehicle tax.
• SORN: Statutory Off Road Notification, telling DVLA a vehicle is kept off the road.
• V5C: the vehicle registration certificate, commonly called the log book.
• Keeper: the person recorded as responsible for the vehicle. Tax is tied to the keeper, not the car.
• Tax due date: the day the current tax period ends.
• Untaxed: no valid tax and no SORN on record.
• Continuous insurance enforcement: the rule that a vehicle needs insurance unless it is SORN.
• DVLA: the agency that holds the vehicle record. We are independent and not affiliated with it.

The tax status and due date come from the DVLA Vehicle Enquiry Service. MOT Check Now reads that record and presents it in plain English. We are independent and are not affiliated with the DVLA, the DVSA or GOV.UK, and the check is not an official certificate. Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

There can be a short lag between a payment and the record changing. If you have just paid and the check still shows Untaxed, wait a little and try again.