Belfast has been named as the car tax dodging capital of the UK after it was revealed the Northern Irish city was found to be the worst offending area, with over 38,223 vehicles found to be driving illegally.
In Belfast alone, missed car tax bills are seeing the Government lose out on over £5.7m per year annually.
Birmingham was the second worst performing city with 37,907 fines and a value of £5,686,050.
Car tax is due annually and the amount to pay varies with the type of vehicle and the amount of CO2 emissions it produces.
Electric cars typically pay no car tax, motorcycles pay less and higher-end vehicles tend to pay more.
You can find when your car tax is due here.
Drivers need to pay car tax if they are planning on driving a vehicle on public roads, or even just parking it on the street. Failure to pay vehicle tax will usually result in an £80 fine, though drivers can receive a 50 percent discount if you pay within 28 days.
If they don’t pay the fine, they could then be charged up to £1,000 and could even have their vehicle seized.
In comparison, Western Central London was the best performing area with only had 216 fines worth £32,400 in unpaid car taxes, although this will be massively impacted by substantial and prolonged investment in public transport that means cars, for many, are not required in the city.
The Scottish islands of Shetland and the Hebrides come in second and third places respectively.
According to the data obtained from freedom of information (FOI) requests, Worcester was found to have the most car tax fines per 1,000 residents with 27.9.
Worcester was considerably higher than second place Luton with 22.06 enforcement actions per 1,000 residents.
A number of other West Midlands cities, including Birmingham and Wolverhampton, were also some of the most common offenders for not paying car tax coming in joint fifth place.
