In Estonia, 86,000 vehicles will be subject to a new tax — ERR News
In Estonia, about 86,000 vehicles with suspended registration will be subject to the motor vehicle tax from next year. Owners of such cars had to decide by the beginning of November whether to remove them from the state register, but a significant portion did not do so, ERR News reports.
Registry cleanup
On November 1, Estonia's Transport Administration removed more than 70,000 vehicles from the register whose registration had been suspended for at least seven years. They included long-abandoned, missing, or destroyed cars.
According to Siim Sarapuu, head of the administration's transport services department, the agency sent notifications to approximately 100,000 people in the summer. About 30,000 of them ultimately decided not to remove their vehicles from the register. These cars, together with approximately 56,000 vehicles whose registration has been suspended for less than seven years, will be taxed from next year.
Options for owners
Sarapuu noted that owners can return a vehicle to use by arranging insurance and passing a technical inspection; hand it over to a waste-processing company for disposal; or apply for temporary removal from the register.
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Against the backdrop of the new rules, owners are increasingly turning in cars for scrap metal. Kuusakoski in Tallinn accepts between 15 and 20 cars daily and pays approximately €200 to €400 for them. Urmo Viisitamm, chairman of the company's management board, said that since mid-September, intake volumes had been approximately 50% higher than in the same period last year.
The state is also running a campaign under which cars can be collected from private property for disposal until November 8. This year, 150 cars have already been handed over to Kuusakoski. A registration certificate is required for such removal, but as part of the campaign, the Transport Administration issues missing documents free of charge.
Due to the large number of applications, their processing times have increased. According to Sarapuu, the administration previously received 2,000 to 3,000 applications per week, while in the final two weeks before the deadline it processed about 1,000 applications per day. He also urged owners of vehicles that no longer physically exist to remove them from the register by the end of the year: the procedure currently costs €15, while next year it will cost €800.
