A 40-year-old car does not stop needing insurance, servicing or a dry garage. It does stop needing to pay road tax, and DVLA figures suggest almost 24,000 owners of 1984 and 1985-built vehicles are still paying it anyway, months or years after their car quietly became old enough to qualify for free vehicle tax.
Analysis by our Heritage Car Insurance’s classic vehicle team, based on a DVLA Freedom of Information response.
Why would 24,000 people be paying tax they don’t owe?
Under the DVLA’s rolling 40-year exemption, a car built before 1 January 1985 became eligible to stop paying Vehicle Excise Duty from 1 April 2025, and a car built before 1 January 1986 followed it from 1 April 2026. A Freedom of Information response from the DVLA shows 18,040 vehicles built in 1985 and a further 5,869 built in 1984 are still recorded as taxed in the standard class, not the historic one, despite being old enough to make the switch. The DVLA cannot confirm individual eligibility from this data alone, since a small number will have been substantially rebuilt in the last 30 years and would not qualify. But for the large majority sitting in this cohort, the honest reading is straightforward: they are paying for a status their car no longer holds.
A further 39,521 vehicles built in 1985 are declared SORN and outside the historic class too. They are not currently being taxed, but their owners are one Post Office visit away from a cleaner V5C and, eventually, one less thing to think about when the car comes off the drive.
The overpaying cohort, May 2026
| Cohort (May 2026) | Vehicles |
| Built 1985, taxed, not in historic class | 18,040 |
| Built 1984, taxed, not in historic class | 5,869 |
| Combined taxed vehicles potentially eligible | 23,909 |
| Built 1985, SORN, not in historic class | 39,521 |
| Class of 1985 already switched (early/grace) | 7,111 |
How much does this actually cost the drivers involved?
Cars registered before March 2001 are taxed under the DVLA’s Private/Light Goods (PLG) class by engine size rather than emissions, currently £230 a year for engines up to 1,549cc and £375 a year above that. Apply those rates to the 23,909 taxed vehicles in this cohort and the range runs from roughly £5 million up to £9 million a year in tax that a meaningful share of these owners may no longer owe. We cannot say precisely where in that range the true figure sits, since the DVLA dataset does not break the cohort down by engine size, but even the low end is not a rounding error.
Our Heritage’s classic car insurance specialists, who arrange cover for classic and historic vehicles across the UK, ran the same DVLA dataset to see how many owners might be missing out on an exemption they are already entitled to. The scale of the taxed cohort, close to 24,000 vehicles, was larger than we expected for a rule that has now been running for over a decade.
For an individual owner, the arithmetic is more personal than the aggregate. A driver paying £375 a year on a car that should be £0 has, if they have been overpaying since April 2025 or 2026 without noticing, already handed over several hundred pounds for nothing. That is the entire point of checking the V5C rather than assuming the DVLA will flag it.