Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein)
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343. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will outline the rationale for not allowing taxi drivers to pay the motor tax relating to their taxi online. [15184/14]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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Licensing authorities have an obligation under Article 3 of the Road Vehicles (Registration and Licensing) (Amendment) Regulations 1992 to be satisfied that a vehicle is correctly taxed and the authority must have adequate documentation to support a claim for a particular rate of tax.  In order to avail of the small public service vehicle rate of tax, which at €95 annually is a concessionary rate, the owner is required to submit a current public service vehicle licence when applying for a motor tax disc.

The public service vehicle licence is a paper based process and consequently it is currently not possible to facilitate the taxing of small public service vehicles through the online motor tax service. It is a matter for my colleague, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, under whose remit the National Vehicle and Driver File (NVDF) and the online motor tax infrastructure falls, to examine the feasibility of developing an electronic  interface  with the National Transport Authority to supply the necessary supporting evidence to enable these vehicles to be taxed online.