Velology is the study and collection of vehicle tax discs, particularly of those issued in the United Kingdom from 1 January 1921 to 30 September 2014. A tax disc was a circular certificate that vehicle owners had to place on the front windscreen of road vehicles, as visual proof that vehicle tax has been paid. Similar systems exist in some other countries, such as in Ireland, but the use of

automatic number plate recognition Automatic number-plate recognition (ANPR; see also other names below) is a technology that uses optical character recognition on images to read vehicle registration plates to create vehicle location data. It can use existing closed-circuit ...

has rendered tax discs redundant in the United Kingdom. The word is a combination of the acronym "VEL", for vehicle excise licence, and

-ology ''-logy'' is a suffix in the English language, used with words originally adapted from Ancient Greek ending in ('). The earliest English examples were anglicizations of the French '' -logie'', which was in turn inherited from the Latin ''-log ...

.Hill, p. 5 Collectors are known as velologists.

History of tax discs

The vehicle excise duty was first introduced in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

in 1889, but the requirement to display a paper tax disc on the vehicle came into force on 1 January 1921. Initially, tax discs were issued for one year (annual) to 31 December, or for three months (quarterly) to 24 March, 30 June, 30 September or 31 December.Hill, p. 7 Early discs were made from plain paper, without perforations; the

selvedge A selvage (US English) or selvedge (British English) is a "self-finished" edge of a piece of fabric which keeps it from unraveling and fraying. The term "self-finished" means that the edge does not require additional finishing work, such as hem ...

was cut or folded to create the main circular shape. Colour printing was introduced in 1923.History of the Tax Disc
/ref> Advertising on the reverse of the disc was allowed from 1924, with companies such as Shell Oil placing advertisements. This was abolished in 1926, after which the reverse showed text relating to the refund available for unexpired licences. Perforations were used from 1938, enabling a better fit within the standard disc holders; however, the perforations were missing from 1942 to 1952, perhaps as a result of equipment damage during the

war War is an armed conflict between the armed forces of states, or between governmental forces and armed groups that are organized under a certain command structure and have the capacity to sustain military operations, or between such organi ...

. In 1961 major changes occurred, with a redesign of the printed pattern – for better security – and a new system of monthly issues, rather than the standard December expiry of the past. From then on, the expiry month was displayed. From 2001, watermarking and embossing were added to prevent fraud. The last tax discs in the United Kingdom expired on 30 September 2015, but the requirement to display them ended on 1 October 2014. In the last month before the abolition of tax discs came into force, the DVLA issued some new tax discs on printer paper, to save costs.

Design

The design of British licence disc has varied over the decades since its introduction on 1 January 1921. Among the factors for its evolution are the changing legislation and the increase in security features to mitigate

counterfeiting A counterfeit is a fake or unauthorized replica of a genuine product, such as money, documents, designer items, or other valuable goods. Counterfeiting generally involves creating an imitation of a genuine item that closely resembles the original ...

. The latest series (2003) incorporated a

bar code A barcode or bar code is a method of representing data in a visual, Machine-readable data, machine-readable form. Initially, barcodes represented data by varying the widths, spacings and sizes of parallel lines. These barcodes, now commonly ref ...

to verify its authenticity with the vehicle it was registered to, and to increase efficiency of renewal applications as renewal via the

internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

was introduced. A design variant was adopted in Wales in the early 1970s with the month expressed as a number instead of by name and other details printed additionally in Welsh. This was introduced when the government decided that all official documentation in Wales would be bilingual, but it was judged that the print size would be too small for the name of month to be abbreviated and displayed in two languages. Later, this design with the month expressed as a number was adopted throughout the UK.

1921 series

The 1921 series was the first design of the licence disc which were required to be displayed in every British vehicle since 1 January 1921. They were issued with two possible lengths of duration: one year (annual) or three months (sometimes referred to as a quarterly licence). Quarterly licences were issued on coloured paper to differentiate between the two periods of duty they were issued for.

1923 series

1932 series

1938 series

The 1938 series of Annual licence discs were a minor design revision to the 1932 series, and were issued from 1 January 1938 to July 1950. The background pattern text was revised to read "Mechanically propelled vehicle licence", instead of "Road Fund Licence".

1951 series

The 1951 series were first issued on 1 January 1951 as a revision to the previous series. The emblems of Regions of the United Kingdom were replaced with the expiry year and the arrangement of the expiry date was modified to increase

legibility Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour or architecture, for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the p ...

. Licence discs issued for 1954 to 1956 removed the requirement for specifying the colour of the vehicle. A diagonal colour band

overprint An overprint is an additional layer of text or graphics added to the face of a Postage stamp, postage or revenue stamp, postal stationery, banknote or Ticket (admission), ticket after it has been Printing, printed. Post offices most often use ...

was used for licences for 1951 and 1952, and a vertical band for the remainder of the series.

1957 series

The 1957 series were first issued on 1 January 1957 and continued until the replacement of quarter-year licences with four-month licences on 1 October 1960.

1961 series

2003 series

Notes

References

* Hill, Tony; (2006) ''Trade and Collect Tax Discs'' UK: Collecticus {{ISBN, 978-1-873313-10-7 excerpts availabl
online
* Tennant, Chris, & Hitchings, Ed; (2012) ''Tax Discs of the British Isles'' UK: Revenue Society. Catalogues b
John Barefoot

External links

The Velologist

History of the Tax Disc
Hobbies Collecting