Foreigners residing in the Netherlands who have a car registered in their home country are likely not to be obeying the law.

The regulation states that a car with a foreign registration may be driven for a maximum of two weeks before it must get a Dutch registration.

That this law may not be very well observed is evidenced by the fact that currently there are 350.000 foreign workers in the Netherlands, but only 31 per cent of them have a car in their name.

Pay more tax

Christian Democrat MP Pieter Omtzigt has had enough of this, he says. Referring to the number of foreign workers without a car registered, he said, "I suspect it is a large group of cars. That’s a lot of tax the government is not receiving."

He has called on the junior Finance Minister to come up with a plan to force people with a foreign registered car in the Netherlands to pay Dutch road tax by the end of summer.

Omtzigt is not alone in his opinion either: according to a poll on De Telegraaf’s site, around 90 per cent of people agree with making foreigners pay.

Sources: Volkskrant, De Telegraaf