The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) will make no allowances for drivers who have simply forgotten to buy a new disc.

Motoring groups said people who were out of the country or in hospital would be unfairly penalised, and unregistered drivers, who posed the most danger, would escape undetected.

The DVLA has refused to appoint an independent arbiter to consider extenuating circumstances. Under the new rules, people who sell their cars but fail to send the DVLA details of the new owner will remain liable for the road tax and, if they fail to pay, will be sent £80 fines. The fines are being imposed to reduce the £200 million lost each year through car tax evasion.

There are an estimated 1.75 million untaxed vehicles on the roads and most of them also have no insurance or MoT test. The DVLA predicts that more than 100,000 people a month will be fined and expects to raise about £40 million a year.

But critics denounced the move as a stealth tax that would raise twice as much for the DVLC as speed cameras do for the Treasury.

Until today, the DVLA could fine drivers only after spotting their cars on the streets without a valid tax disc. Now it will be able to generate fines automatically using its database of vehicle owners.

Anyone who does not renew their tax disc will be assumed to be guilty unless the DVLA has received written notification that the vehicle has been sold or is off the road. The fines, which will be reduced to £40 if paid promptly, will be issued six weeks after the tax disc expires.

The DVLA admitted that many drivers would be caught unawares by the new rules, despite a £7.5 million advertising campaign beginning on Sunday.

Jeff Mumford, the DVLA’s deputy manager, said: “The registration system in Britain has been too friendly. We are looking to slowly tighten the screw.”

He said that the new system, known as continuous registration, would catch the hundreds of thousands of drivers who skip a month or two of their road tax by falsely claiming that their vehicle has been off the road.

Some of the money from the fines will be used to increase the number of DVLA inspection patrols to clamp untaxed vehicles in the six-week period before the fine is issued.

The DVLA believes that the system will help to reduce the number of abandoned cars because the last-registered owners will be fined unless they have notified the DVLA that their vehicles were scrapped or sold. Scrapyards will be required to issue certificates of destruction.

Damian Green, the Shadow Transport Secretary, agreed that something needed to be done about the huge number of untaxed cars, but said: “Mottorists will be suspicious that this is just another stealth tax, especially in the absence of an independent arbiter for cases where genuine mistakes have been made.”

The AA said that drivers intent on fraud would still be able to exploit loopholes. Paul Watters, its head of roads policy, said: “We are switching from a lax system to a harsh system overnight. It is a great shame that the DVLA is not going to establish an independent appeals process because there will be many innocent mistakes. People will get taken suddenly into hospital and the last thing on their mind will be dealing with paperwork. Young people will go off travelling and mistakenly think they can safely leave their car on their parents’ drive.”

Mr Watters said the rules would not tackle the “motoring underclass” who did not appear on the DVLA’s database. “These people just laugh at the rest of us, racing through speed cameras and tearing up parking fines because they cannot be traced,” he said.

The AA called for the new rules to be balanced by making it easier to purchase a new tax disc. Mr Mumford said the DVLA would be sympathetic to drivers who could prove that they had been in hospital.

Fine for some

Apart from speeding and tardy taxpaying, there are fixed penalties for:

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