A man who imported a second-hand car from the UK filed a judicial protest against Transport Malta for using a British evaluation system, which over-estimated the vehicle’s emissions, leading to a higher registration tax.
In his protest, Godfrey Attard said he bought a second-hand 1998 Honda Civic from the UK, which was inspected by Transport Malta’s technical unit in August 2012. An official informed Christopher Attard, who was representing Mr Attard, that he had to pay €961 in registration tax instead of €698.
The amount of €698 was calculated based on registration valuation issued by a technical unit official from the authority’s vehicle valuation admin site, the protest said. The registration affected how much he was going to pay for his annual licence fee increasing it to €737 from €531.
However, Mr Attard had carried out his research and pointed out the mistake to the official who, in turn, told Mr Attard to go to Hall B as he could not do anything.
He did so and, after waiting a long time, spoke to another unit official. He presented him with all the relevant documents together with the details of another car, of the same make, model, engine and emission, which was correctly registered.
The transport official went back into his office to verify the information and, half an hour later, informed Mr Attard they were going to carry out verifications with Cap Motor Research, acknowledged as the independent benchmark in the UK for used car trade prices, as there were “some discrepancies”. The official told Mr Attard to go and, once investigated, the authority would contact him.
The authority could easily make further verifications and comparisons with other websites such as autoevoloution.com, which were trustworthy and classified his Honda with the correct carbon dioxide emission, Mr Attard said in his protest.
It is a “proven and established fact” that Mr Attard’s Honda had carbon dioxide emissions of 164g/km as listed in the EEC Vehicle Type Approval Certificate and not 214g/km as Transport Malta claimed.
It was “known” that this case was about “substantial discrepancies” between the figures issued by Cap Motor Research and factual figures. This was not an isolated case but “unfortunately” there were many other cases where the registration tax on the carbon dioxide emissions was actually higher and people were paying more. This money had to be refunded by the authority, the protest said.
“It is clear as crystal that the system used by Transport Malta to obtain the technical data and vehicle specifications, including their emissions, from the Cap system, was ‘defective and not trustworthy’ to the detriment of citizens who bought a car and ended up having to pay more in registration tax and for the licence”.
The authority’s “irresponsible” actions were prejudicing the rights of Mr Attard and of other Maltese and EU citizens, the protest said.
It called on the authority to immediately registered Mr Attard’s Honda under the correct specifications with a carbon dioxide emission of 164 g/km. Failure to do so would result in further and immediate court action against the authority, holding it responsible for all present and future damages, the protest said.
Legal procurator Quentin Tanti and lawyer Amanda Poole signed the judicial protest.