Meath County Council has placed a warning on its website that it will no longer accept a herd number as qualifying a driver to tax a jeep or van as commercial. The policy of all county councils now is that commercial tax will only be given where the driver is self-employed – and can prove this by showing a letter from the Revenue Commissioners.

The bar on herd numbers is despite the fact that any person with a herd number will be actively farming as the Department of Agriculture suspends herd numbers where animals are no longer kept. If you are a PAYE worker, you can only tax your vehicle as commercial if you can show that it is used to carry goods for your employer, in this case by a letter from the boss.

I was recently contacted by a Meath reader who is hopping mad after getting his motor tax bill. He recently bought a small van which he uses for transporting turf and logs to his elderly parents and parents-in-law.

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When the tax expired, he learned that he could not avail of the commercial rate of €333 the next year.

He would have to tax the van as a private vehicle at a multiple of this cost. He was then enraged to be told that the tax would not be based on engine emissions, as has been the case with cars since 2008. Instead, it had to be calculated on the very old system that was based on engine cubic centimetres – which meant higher tax again.

This, he pointed out, is despite the fact that the engine in his van is the same as used in various car models. For a popular small van like the 1.9-litre Volkswagen Caddy, the tax is €710 where not considered commercial.

“A lot of farmers’ sons drive jeeps with commercial tax but could be caught for higher tax given that herd numbers no longer qualify them for a commercial rate,” he warned.