Saturday, September 06, 2014

Motorcycle Road Tax Renewal complications

Although I have done a few rounds for my car, it is still rather exciting since this is the first for my motorcycle. The 3 things that I would need to fulfill are:
1) Get my motorcycle inspected.
2) Ensure my insurance is fully covered (going to be a bummer, I will explain below)
3) Ensure (1) and (2) is done, renew my road tax. (double bummer, it relates to (2) above).

(1) Inspection
Based on Singapore Laws and Regulations as of today, any motorcycle that is more than 3 years old will need to be inspected annually.

I went to the inspection centre on a Saturday morning about 8am and was the 2nd bike in queue. I could have done this earlier but I lost my LTA letter. Freaked out as this had never happened to me, I flipped my entire messy house trying to find it but still could not find anything. So I read the VICOM website which said to just explained over the payment counter that I misplaced it. Haha! The lady asked "vehicle number?" and after a moment, she said $18.15 (incl GST) !

http://www.vicom.com.sg/faq.htm#12 
What documents do I need to bring for the vehicle inspection?
You have to bring the inspection notice mailed out by LTA. If you have misplaced your notice, you can just inform our inspectors of your situation and we will carry out the necessary procedures to ensure your car is due for inspection.
* Notification is sent via the post to the registered owner of the vehicle when it is due for inspection

After I paid for the inspection, she handed me a printed payment which I subsequently handed over to the inspector at the motorcycle inspection bay. They did check here and there like cars but much faster since its smaller than cars! It was over in barely 10 minutes and I received the Test Certificate (valid for 3 months only). 

(2) Insurance
I didn't renew my insurance and went straight to LTA. 

(3) Renew Extended my road tax
The 3 key dates were not synchronised on the same date and I thought it would pose a problem in the future. 
COE date: 4 June
Road tax date: 21 Oct
Insurance date: 10 Dec (date I had purchased the motorcycle)

My hunch was as long as the road tax date and insurance date didn't coincide with COE date, it may look suspicious. I wrote in LTA and a friendly officer called me back in 24 hours (I'm impressed with the turn around time! I was expecting the traditional 3 days for national agency to call me back). She explained to me the most common arrangements were to coincide both road tax and insurance dates, because once the vehicle is transferred to another person, the insurance date will be different with the road tax date. There is no problem with 3 dates not on the same day, which really did happened to me and there was no problem at all actually. Ha!

I decided to visit LTA for revising my road tax to coincide with my insurance date. The lady consultant explained to me that I am only allowed to change the road tax date once. After much discussion, I discovered that my COE date would coincide with my road tax date and insurance in early Dec! (Off by a few days from my insurance). So I paid $8 for my new road tax!

Going forward, I would only need to finalise this when I renew my road tax in December, with only 1 minor problem, find an insurance company to cover my insurance which is a less than 6 months insurance.