So the other day I got two very official and intimidating looking pieces of mail telling me to pay the “汽車燃料使用費” for my scooter. One of them is for the year 108, the other is for the year 106, both due at the end of this month. (125cc scooter, each bill is $456.) I have no idea what happened to 107, or for that matter the years from roughly 90-105, all of which are years that I have owned this scooter and as far as I know never, ever paid or received a bill for whatever this fee is. It’s got all the fancy barcodes and I assume I can just pay at a convenience store.
But … um … what’s going on? Why haven’t I seen this bill (tax? fee?) before? Am I about to get twenty years of old unpaid bills? I just pay the insurance renewal every year, and I thought that did the job.
It’s been five or six years since I last had a bewildering moment of “Huh, so I’ve spent years breaking a law I didn’t know about, cool cool cool.” Am I about to have another of those moments?
Thanks (I guess?) in advance for whatever bad news I may be about to receive.
Yeah every year you pay $450 or so to the city where your vehicle is registered to. I didn’t realize it was a fuel fee and I thought it was a registrar fee but no matter. Perhaps you moved and didn’t change the address on your vehicle registration. And now they tracked you down finally.
Had a friend who had many traffic camera fines but thought he was clever by not updating the ministry of his new address. They tracked him down 10 years later and he had to pay fines plus penalties. (Not insinuating that’s what you did but that sometimes they let amounts owing pile up before hunting you down)
I sympathize with you because I’m in the same boat. I just checked the link that tempogain provided. I bought my scooter new in 2012 yet I’ve never received a bill for this tax although I’ve always kept my address up to date at immigration and at the DMV.
Mysteriously the fees somehow got paid in 2014 and 2015. Was it paid through my insurance?
This isn’t new for me, though. I was unpleasantly surprised last year when I looked at the traffic violation inquiry thingie at the iBon machine (my friend had just told me about it) and discovered I had 4 outstanding tickets from speed cameras, yet I never received any notices. It shocks me because I’m so thorough about keeping my address up to date.
I’ve always updated my address with immigration and the DMV yet I had 4 outstanding tickets that I never got notifications for. Something is wrong with the system or I just have terrible luck.
My scooter got flashed in Taichung years ago and I figured that after two months I got away with it but I guess they eventually figured it out and it was mailed by the Kaohsiung government almost two months later.
In your case since you never signed for the registered letter as it wasn’t delivered if you tell the bureau they will waive the penalties.
The letters are sent registered? Amazing, I never received anything. Anyway, I paid the fines because honestly I know I’ve driven too fast and likely deserved the tickets.
Hmm … so I’m supposed to update my scooter registration address with the DMV? Oops. I don’t think that’s happened. I’ve always kept my APRC updated, and my scooter insurance shows the updated address, as does my license - I guess I’ve got a new copy of my license since I moved to Taipei (in 2005!). But the scooter registration is different yet again? Presumably there’s another piece of paper somewhere in my scooter that still shows a Tainan address. (That envelope is terrifying. Twenty years worth of parking passes and insurance receipts and who knows what else, and it’s like the box of cords we all keep - we know we can throw 90% of it away, but we’re scared to do that because we’re not sure which 10% we actually need.)
Does anyone know when this tax thing started? My unpaid records “only” go back to 101年, but I had this scooter seven or eight years before that!
I always just went to the DMV and did a change of address where they updated my license. This should update the vehicle registration address as well, I assume. I was never advised differently at the DMV. However, this is Taiwan.
The driving bureau removes the insane penalties but you still pay the original fine. It’s like every 30 days overdue it goes up and in a short time you are paying double or triple the original fine. My friend just said he forgot to update his address and they just brought him to the original fine.
And yes you get a nice registered letter with a nice picture of you and the bike flying by or running a light for your wall at home
I had to finally shred that pile of documents that I collected over the years. Now I try to keep only 1 or 2 years of documents otherwise it becomes unmanageable for me.
Whoops, I’d completely forgotten about this thread. Does anyone know if I can pay these outstanding fuel taxes at 7-11? I didn’t readily see that option on the webpage.
Thanks, I just used the credit card option. $2,300 was an unexpected expense this month but now I’m up-to-date. It still mystifies me why I’ve never received a bill.
