alt Hacker NewsHuh, similar situation in Italy: “Tens of thousands of Italian drivers have purchased Polish number plates for their cars and motorbikes in an elaborate scheme to evade road taxes and pay lower insurance premiums.
An estimated 60,000 motorists — mostly in and around Naples — have been enticed by the promise of 70 per cent savings on road tax and insurance fees to transfer ownership of their vehicles to shell companies in Poland and register the vehicles there, according to an industry group.
Now with Italy’s general election looming, Giorgia Meloni’s rightwing coalition has announced “the elimination” of the unpopular annual road tax that helped spawn the evasion schemes. The bollo auto will be cut for an estimated 14.5mn small and midsized vehicles — a giveaway that will cost Italy’s already strained public coffers an estimated €2.4bn in lost revenue next year” [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/74e70f0c-3788-4343-93d7-9c8740ee2...
Replies
Paying bollo is not the main reason. Bollo is around 100-200€ a year. Third Party Insurance for cars is mandatory and in Naples, due to high level of fraud, it can amount to 1500-2000€ a year. Using a Polish insurance, or a fake Polish insurance, is the main reason to get a Polish license plate.
Luckily the loop hole is being closed by the Polish authorities after it became popular.
This problem is older and existed already before the pandemic, but instead of Polish plates it was German/French, as those countries didn't have such expensive insurance and it was easy to have a foreign branch of a company register one's company car.
The first crackdown was also before the pandemic and being Polish and in-and-out of Italy I fully expected to get caught in the crossfire, but that never happened.
Apparently I was driving too much like a tourist - indicators and all.
That being said a few people from the local Polish community got into trouble, but it always first due to driving into a Zona a Traffico Limitato with a car that shouldn't be there - plates notwithstanding.