Examination of an altered bar code on a vehicle tax disc

Abstract

Altered vehicle excise licences (tax discs) are regularly submitted for questioned document examination in order to reveal the original vehicle details. A bar code printed on tax discs permits the electronic storage and transfer of vehicle licensing information. In a recent case involving a tax disc on which the printed serial number had been partially removed, it was possible to restore and manually decode an obliterated bar code. This allowed recovery of the complete serial number of the disc and subsequent retrieval of the original entries.