Judge postpones ruling on VRT case

A High Court judge has said he regretted having to postpone the delivery of his ruling in a major case that has questioned the legality of the Vehicle Registration Tax (VRT) system.

A judgment was due yesterday in the action taken by Used Car Importers of Ireland (UCII) against the Minister for Finance and the Revenue Commissioners.

The company had argued the operation of VRT by Revenue had denied it the opportunity to compete with new car distributors for the last 20 years. And it has looked for €131m in damages.

Mr Justice Roderick Murphy said something had arisen which required further consideration and he could not deliver his judgment.

He also said he could not prejudice the outcome of this consideration by announcing the exact reasons for the delay. “It requires a little more work,” he said.

Mr Justice Murphy said he would try to have the judgment finalised by early February when he returned from scheduled sittings in Cork. This would bring closure to an 18-year process of High Court litigation.

He also said he regretted that all parties in the case had not been notified about his late decision to postpone his judgment.

Hearings on the case took 33 days last year — the culmination of 17 years of litigation. This followed the introduction of VRT on Jan 1, 1993, to meet the demands of the European open market agreement.

The judge has heard from UCII that it had a plan to import thousands of cheap nearly new cars from Japan, but this was abandoned because of the way Revenue interpreted and implemented the Finance Act of 1992.

UCII claimed the price it was willing to charge Irish customers was wrongly ignored by Revenue as a base for VRT. Instead, it said, the tax authorities used an unfair and secretive database of values.

This, it said, served to protect the trade of new car distributors by increasing values and charging more tax.

And it said Revenue continued to overvalue used cars by failing to accurately reflect depreciation trends in the trade.

According to UCII this meant customers had overpaid for cars and too much tax was levied on imported secondhand vehicles.

Witnesses on behalf of Revenue said it had carried out extensive market research in order to properly value cars ahead of the introduction of VRT on Jan 1, 1993.

It said its values, which were drawn from the niche trade publication the Car Buyers Guide, did reflect the asking prices in the market for secondhand cars.

It said a lot of work was done to ensure the value levels its set were accurate.

In a brief discussion on the case yesterday, Mr Justice Murphy said it was a very complex case and it would not be appropriate to deliver a judgment in draft form.