But then why was I issued a tax refund if they knew this gap existed?

Precisely my thoughts too, they replied threatening court action and I couldn't be bothered with that so I paid up and decided I would try and argue afterwards.

I have tried this way, and the dvla didn't acknowledge, they said it was my responsibility to tell them at the time. Another bit of information I have just remembered is that I was sent 4 v5c for the car, I still have two - one went with the car and I sent one off. This is, I only had the car a week so i didn't have time to contact the dvla to let them know this and obviously after the incident I thought it wasn't relevant

The insurance were not involved because I didn't claim and no one else was involved

Yes thats right. I don't think I had a receipt. Under normal circumstances i would have but the whole recovery was out of my control, took me a while for me to find out where my car went! Yes they would vouch.

The recovery place/scrappy

Ah but there is a slight issue, The CoD was issued after the initial fine and therefore the dvla are not accepting this.

Hello, Well the car was recovered because I ended up in hospital and therefore I had to pay to have the car recovered and thus didn't get anything for the scraped car. I did get a certificate of destruction however that was only after I found out I needed one and the dvla had already fined me. I paid over the phone for the fine Thank you

Hi, a while ago I wrote off my car and sent it to the scrappy. I applied for the remaining tax to be reimbursed to me and sure enough, that happened no problem. after a few months I received a letter from the dvla and subsequently was fined. I argued saying that if I was given the money back from the tax then surely they must of realised that the car was off the road. Furthermore the form that I applied for the tax back stated that a refund wont be given unless certain criteria had been satisfied Here is the relevant words from the form: You will only receive a refund if one of the following applies: You are the current or last registered keeper and: • you have recently sold, transferred or exported the vehicle. If you have not already told DVLA please enclose the relevant section of the Registration Certificate (V5C) with this application. You are the current registered keeper and: • you are keeping the vehicle off the public road and you will not tax it within the next 21 days. YOU MUST MAKE A SORN BY FILLING IN SECTION 3 OPPOSITE, or • the vehicle has been scrapped by an Authorised Treatment Facility, or • you have changed the vehicle’s tax class to a nil value tax class (such as ‘Disabled’), or • the vehicle has been stolen (see note A over the page). Also the form has an option you can tick and the car will be sorn, I can't remember if I ticked this, although I cant imagine why I wouldn't have... I paid the fine as the appeals were being discarded however I was wondering whether I have a case to claim the money back from the dvla because I don't see how I was in the wrong.. . If so, how would I go about doing this? Thank you, any advice would be greatly appreciated Jasper