Farmers must declare restricted usage for lower jeep tax

LOCAL Authority officials have been instructed to clamp down on ‘commercial’ road tax for farm jeeps, and the Gardaí are also being advised on the change, unless there is an assurance in writing from the owner that use of the vehicle is restricted.

In future, owners of crew cabs and jeeps will be restricted to using these vehicles only for the purposes allowed under the commercial rate of road tax. To use the vehicles for ‘social purposes’ will incur a four fold increase in the road tax, to almost €1,000 per annum.

At a recent meeting between Limerick IFA and officials of the Motor Taxation Office of Limerick County Council, farmers were told that a declaration by the owner of the vehicle that it will only be used for farming business is now required for ‘commercial’ rate road tax. The declaration must be endorsed by the applicant’s local Gardaí.

Council officials told the IFA that similar procedures are now in place in Cork, Kerry, Waterford, Clare, South Tipperary and Limerick city, and that it is an offence to use such vehicles taxed as ‘commercial’ for “social, domestic or pleasure” purposes.

The emergence of the crew cab jeep in recent years, which is designed for the carriage of up to four people as well as goods, and which is being used as a general purpose passenger vehicle while taxed as ‘commercial’, is blamed for the road tax clamp-down.

As a result, using the farm jeep to collect the children from school, make a trip to the local village for groceries, or drive to the Sunday hurling match is set to become an expensive undertaking for thousands of farms countrywide.

To change the taxation category of the vehicle from commercial to private, which would allow social, domestic and pleasure use of the vehicle, will increase the road tax from about €250 to €1,000 per annum.