Government to re-think road tax

[In The Pit]

Some hot of the press news tonight, this will be all over the papers and news channels tomorrow, the government are looking into changing the whole VED system. They are not happy as they say they are losing money because people are buying greener cars in lower tax bands (I thought that was the point) and as cars give better MPG people are spending less on fuel (the fact its so expensive must have something to do with it too). There is talk of a two tier road tax one for people who wish travel on the motorways and major roads and another for lesser roads, imagine if there was an accident and the police diverted traffic they may have to find two routes for the two different tax bands.

 

The more sensible suggestion they have is to scrap road tax altogether and put a one off payment onto a vehicle when its new, thats much fairer as companies/people who buy brand new have more money and are more likely able to afford it than someone who is driving a 15 year old car on a tight budget just so they can get to work. From an Autoshite point of view thats good news as people will be more likely to keep hold of their old cars and not px them for something new, also with no tax to pay on older vehicles that means more money to spend on repairs servicing so it could see vehicles giving longer service lives which is good for the environment and garage repair businesses.

 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/gre ... green.html

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... osals.html

[Spiny Norman]

1) I'll believe it when I see it.

2) WTF don't they just stick another 10p or whatever on a litre of juice, that way those who use the roads more and pollute more pay for it.

 

Too easy I guess, and it would do away with hundreds of precious civil service jobs, so that's that idea knocked on the head....

 

This has happened before, in the early 90s. There was a huge shortfall in fuel duty as everyone started driving more economical cars and especially the first wave of super economical Diseasels and they had to jack up fuel duty way more than the rate of inflation to compensate.

[KruJoe]

WTF don't they just stick another 10p or whatever on a litre of juice?

They('ll) do that anyway.

[ayrshirelad]

Hmm i suspect that the government suddenly giving older cars free road tax aint gonna happen somehow or other.Could this be because all of a sudden hm government and the petrol retailers are being forced or cajoled into showing us how much we actually pay for our go go juice?? What would the out come be if they scrapped the road tax and put say 5 or 10p on to the price of petrol??? The everybody pays the same? Well in hm govenments view anyway! I suspect that they loosing money cause a lot of people who can trade down are, and also as the price of petrol and fuel in general is going skywards, perhaps people in general are being more carefully with their petrol. If the powers that be came out of their ivory rose tinted towers they might notice this!

[Morgan84]

I would love to see a rise in road tax on cheap and nasty little smug-mobiles such as Aygo's and other equally cheap and nasty little ' eco friendly ' plastic nasty little tin cans on wheels.I can see road tax from all angles,a few examples are

 

1) I have two modern diesels at £30 a year

2) I have several £135 a year cars

3) I have several £220 A YEAR CARS

4) I have some Tax Exempt cars

 

Why should my diesels only pay £30 a year,when I have some Mini's which can do 50 mpg on a run ( high ratio diffs ),yet have to pay £135 ?

Why should my S500 pay £220 a year when that can achieve 35 mpg on a run,yet my tax exempt Daimler V8 250 is far worse !

 

Does my Mini wear out the road more and take up more space than my Mito ??? Erm no !

 

Rating a car on its emissions is wrong;smaller cars 'sometimes' are used as city cars,which means they can be sitting in towns burning fuel,whilst not clocking up the miles,are still polluting.Also,if you have a family with 2+ children,you're going to need a larger car to put child seats in,which is a legal requirement;try putting three child seats in the back of a Fiesta,and getting a buggy to carry them into the boot,and have space left for shopping.Familys are being tax punished into smaller more uncomfortable and less sturdy motors;would you rather ferry your family in a Mondeo with some space and comfort,or squeeze like a sardine into a Fiesta with a tiny little engine struggling to keep up,which could end up using more fuel than the larger car when on a motorway.

 

My bigger more thirsty cars are less likely to do that many miles,as they get through fuel like its going out of fashion,therfor will less likely be taking up space on the roads

 

Does paying more road tax help the environment ? Do all the notes I pay out go up into the sky,and plug the hole in the o-zone layer ? I don't think so

 

My final point - The governent would be far better off with us having more uneconomical cars,as they need fueling up more often,and fuel = revenue £££££££. They don't care about the planet,they just want more of our hard earned cash to waste on salarys,and scheams which never come to anything

[ayrshirelad]

A few years ago under Mr brown when he was chancellor of the exchequer, he tweeked the ved without really letting on. Thus if you happend to own a diesal Zafria you would o=pay the same road tax as a Rolls Royce the way it was worked out!. Now if you own a Zafria the last thing you need is a sudden and unxcpected rise in the road tax!. You have Zafria for a reason i e you have a family and need the space! Mr Rolls probally didnt even notice the rise. Hm Govrernment needs to wake up. We are not out of recession and wont be for a while. If theykeep on raxing us to the hilt threw our fuel cost it will bankrupt the country as we will all be so busy paying for our heating erc we wont have any spare cash left to buy other things! We all cant afford to live in eco house and run electric cars. Some of us live in the wilds of south west scotland where we dont have charging points for our smug mobils! I dont think there is any smug mobiles here anyway!

[Morgan84]

What MPG can your 1.3 Marina and Maestro achieve ?

[In The Pit]

The problem scraping road tax and adding extra to the fuel is that it means the price of everything will go up as its delivered by a lorry also buses/taxi prices will go up aswell.

 

A little more info from the two opposite ends of the newspaper world:

 

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/latestnews/v ... spotlight/

 

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/66734b12-2114 ... z2Adcg7CCw

[garethj]

I'd like to add two very important points.

 

1. There's no such thing as a fair tax.

2. Remember this in any discussions.

 

Tax the rich more? Good idea, but income tax already does this.

Put the tax on fuel? Great, but our chances of copying wuv with his XJS fall away faster

Put the tax on VED? Cool, but what about auntie Doris who only uses her car to go and see the vicar once a week

 

etc

etc

etc

[Wilko220]

I'd like to add two very important points.

 

1. There's no such thing as a fair tax.

2. Remember this in any discussions.

 

Tax the rich more? Good idea, but income tax already does this.

Put the tax on fuel? Great, but our chances of copying wuv with his XJS fall away faster

Put the tax on VED? Cool, but what about auntie Doris who only uses her car to go and see the vicar once a week

 

etc

etc

etc

 

What he said. No outcome will avoid pissing some people off.

[Barry Cade]

The current system is a PITA.. I've just bought a Smart, and was well happy that it was top of the range, even having air conditioning.Which doesn't work. I then find that having air con means it puts out 122 gramms of something, instead of 118, so costs 90 quid a year to tax instead of 30. So having broken air con is costing me 60 quid a year.

[ayrshirelad]

Well the Maestro is very good on fuel as it isnt actually running yet!. Tis a project at the mo. Hasnt been on the road since 199. My Marina can manage 35mpg easily all being well.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

I'd like to see the Guvvmint introduce a sliding scale VED based on how old the car is. So, over 10 years old, 75% of the current rate, over 15 years old 50%, over 20 years old 30% and over 25 years old, free. It's not a classic thing at all - it's giving a bit of a break to those who don't run a W reg Mondeo out of choice but do so because they're living on the bones of their arse and can't afford a newer one.

 

The zero road tax thing on Piouses etc should be abolished anyway. If you can afford to buy one, you can afford 200 quid a year to tax it.

[barefoot]

I suspect that this two tier bollocks has come out of the ministry of misinformation.

They publicise something so ridiculously unpopular at first so that when they unveil the real scheme a few months down the line,

although it is shit, it won't seem quite as shit as the one we're hearing about now & we'll all trot off thinking we got a better deal.

[Stixy]

I suspect that this two tier bollocks has come out of the ministry of misinformation.

They publicise something so ridiculously unpopular at first so that when they unveil the real scheme a few months down the line,

although it is shit, it won't seem quite as shit as the one we're hearing about now & we'll all trot off thinking we got a better deal.

 

this is what allways happens when the govmnt want to change somthing to suit themselves

[dollywobbler]

I'm starting to wish ANPR had never been invented. They keep seeing it as some miracle cure. "We can use ANPR to check whether people are using routes they haven't paid for." True. But how much is that going to cost? If you're talking all motorways and major trunk roads, that's an awful lot of cameras. Who's going to pay for that?

 

They should just go back to 'one price fits all' on road tax. T'was a lot simpler in the old days.

[scaryoldcortina]

ANPR isn't so great. These jokers just had 3 "goes" at driving past my house (pass slowly, stop, reverse)....

before winding down a window and looking at the taxdisk instead.

[Tartan58]

2 Ideas that are no doubt flawed in many ways but here goes:

 

1. Pay-as-you-go: I currently pay £260 p/a for the Mx5 (which does about 3000 miles a year), sounds extortionate - but that works out as only 71p a day. I'd be happy to pay even a pound each day I want to take it out for a spin. I've just SORN'd the MX5 over the winter but no doubt on crisp sunny days I'll wish I could go out for a spin - with PAYG simply go online buy 24hrs of road tax and away you go! I suppose it would be impossible to police at the moment until the whole country is covered with ANPR cameras, but no doubt it will be in the not to distant future anyway.

 

2. Limited mileage tax: Keep the tax the same rate but give reductions if you do small mileages. Pay the full amount and you can do as many miles as you like, 50% discount if you do less than 6000miles, 75% if you do less than 2000miles or some such increments. As mileage is recorded at the MOT make the tax payable at the MOT time, you buy what you think you'll need for the next year, and if come the next MOT you've gone over your mileage you simply pay the extra. Clocking will become a problem I suppose.

 

To be honest I think the only workable way to do it is to scrap it altogether and put it on fuel - take an average tax cost of £200p/a, on a car doing 12000miles averaging 40mpg that works out (very roughly) at 15p per liter to cover the cost - hmmm that's higher than I expected

[Mr_Bo11ox]

The current system is OK, they ought to just leave it as it is, except reduce the admin bollox by sacking off the paper discs, sacking off the cross-checking of MOT’s and insurance at the moment you buy it, and making it purchaseable month by month on the internet.

[JohnDeere]

By floating the idea of "paying more to drive on motorways" what they're really doing is a softly-softly launch of road pricing ... i.e. pay as you drive.

 

It's an idea that will be very unpopular with the Daily Wail and the like, but makes lots of sense in every other way -- you encourage people to travel on quieter roads and outside peak times so reduce congestion and the need to build more roads. You save more money by not collecting existing tolls like Dartford, M6. VED disappears (no need for a tax disc with MID and MoT databases) saving more cash (at the moment the govt is losing shedloads sending out all those low-CO2 £0 and £20 discs). You set the initial price so the "average" driver pays the same as VED, thereafter jack the rates up to "reduce congestion" and make up the gap left by falling fuel sales. And you can penalise HGVs less than private cars, unlike when you raise fuel duty. You can still link the rates to CO2 to tick the green boxes. And you can fund specific new road projects by charging extra on those stretches.

 

GPS-enabled black boxes means it's cost efficient to introduce - no gazzillion pound investment in ANPR cameras everywhere. And better still, you get the insurance companies to pick up the tab for the boxes by encouraging them to adopt PAYG insurance too.

 

And Autoshiters would probably win all round, as older cars would be the last phase to come under the scheme, probably with a 20-year cut off.

[CortinaDave]

The problem is that motorists have been the number one cash cow for so long by successive governments that upping what we pay was always an easy way to boost the treasury coffers to get themselves out of the shit.

 

Problem is its now got to the point where its SO highly taxed that its killing the economy - People are using cars less and investing in the cheapest to run smugmobiles possible to stop themselves being crippled by the costs, and businesses are struggling with it too. All of a sudden the government dont know what to do to fill the gap in their revenue - If they put the tax up theres a real chance the revenues they get will actually go DOWN

 

I do quite a lot of miles so petrol is my number one outgoing - more than the rent on my flat.. so i'm very conscious of the cost. back in the 90s when I passed my test I'd often take the car out for a 100+ mile round trip jolly for the hell of it, whereas I'm much less likely to do that now.

[Micrashed]

Apparently there is a fresh air shortage in Birmingham and many of the larger cities people there are already limited to breathing fro just 8 hours a day.

 

The cost of moving fresh are from areas of surplus such as Wales and the Scottish Highlands is just too prohibitive which is why this government is committed to finding a way of ensuring safe breathable air for everyone. Starting from February 30th 2013 every citizen will be rationed to 200 breaths per day ( women in labour will be granted an additional 50 breath allowance).

 

Any breaths taken above this daily allowance will be taxed at 15p in the pound per breath, and the money raised by this taxation will go towards providing an infrastructure to move fresh air about the country from areas of surplus to areas of need. It is hoped that the Wider Integrated Network Delivery (or W.I.N.D.) system will be fully operational by 2025.

 

Your Gubberent thanks you for your understanding.

[Negative Creep]

GPS-enabled black boxes means it's cost efficient to introduce - no gazzillion pound investment in ANPR cameras everywhere. And better still, you get the insurance companies to pick up the tab for the boxes by encouraging them to adopt PAYG insurance too.

 

 

A very worrying idea. Stray over the speed limit? Stop on double yellows, make a illegal turn when no one is around? Cha-ching, automatic fine is in the post

[Micrashed]

The current system is OK, they ought to just leave it as it is, except reduce the admin bollox by sacking off the paper discs, sacking off the cross-checking of MOT’s and insurance at the moment you buy it, and making it purchaseable month by month on the internet.

 

^^^^

THIS

 

Mr Bo11 for El-Presedente

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

ANPR isn't so great. These jokers just had 3 "goes" at driving past my house (pass slowly, stop, reverse)....

before winding down a window and looking at the taxdisk instead.

 

These scum are everywhere now. I heard a sad story about an untaxed Micra - the new owner bought it from the estate of a deceased gent, MOT'd it ready for sale

and parked it on private land where there were some industrial units. That didn't stop these fuckers snooping around, spotting it, clamping it and sending a truck for it the next day. Gone, end of story.

 

They would have seen the end of a shotgun and been instructed to leave ASAP had it been my land.

[retrogeezer]

Make fuel cheaper, people use cars more = more money in the coffers! Just how it used to be!

[Vanny]

2) WTF don't they just stick another 10p or whatever on a litre of juice.

 

How will they tax all the electric cars we'll have in the next 10 years?

[Craig the Princess]

The problem scraping road tax and adding extra to the fuel is that it means the price of everything will go up as its delivered by a lorry also buses/taxi prices will go up aswell.

 

Don't haulage and bus/coach firms get a VED rebate that could be increased by the level of the increase? This was the story when VAT was cut to 15% (Ved was put up by the same amount) and the haulage/transport industries complained. Funny thing is when VAT went up to 17.5% and 20% VED wasn't reduced back

 

ANPR isn't so great. These jokers just had 3 "goes" at driving past my house (pass slowly, stop, reverse)....

before winding down a window and looking at the taxdisk instead.

 

I would be ringing them up with a complaint as that is bang out of order.

[willswitchengage]

The problem scraping road tax and adding extra to the fuel is that it means the price of everything will go up as its delivered by a lorry also buses/taxi prices will go up aswell.

 

I calculated this once, equating the volume of fuel sold in the UK to VED revenues, the redistribution would amount to roughly a 6p rise per litre - for 44tonner drivers this would add about £1500-£2000 to their annual fuel bill - roughly the same as their current VED band. Those who would suffer are "new car" users who pay disgracefully low VED but are medium-high mileage users (and ironically also cause the most congestion and accidents). Plus, this would be a genuine incentive to save fuel by driving less, buying a smaller car, avoiding congestion etc by turning a sunk cost (VED) into a variable cost (paying at the pump).

 

Make fuel cheaper, people use cars more = more money in the coffers! Just how it used to be!

 

Again not entirely true, it's demographic shift that's reducing car usage, not cost. More people live in cities where cars are useless, and young people are more reluctant to learn to drive these days as they don't see it necessary in their lives. The latter has been well documented. This graph is too big to post, but that petrol prices are rising exponentially is a myth. After inflation, it's price has been steady for the past fifty years.

 

I don't see why it's such a bad idea this anyway. Many European countries successfully operate A vignette system - which is basically what this is. Plus, it'll get foreign lorries paying their fair share - most of which don't even fuel up in this country, instead filling long range fuel tanks in France/Belgium. Also, bear in mind reducing fuel prices to bribe an electorate is one of the oldest tricks in politics - autocratic regimes in Venezuela and Saudi Arabia essentially giving away petrol for free... go figure.

[peter9000uk]

Why not introduce a system based on the new list price of a vehicle combined with the age of said vehicle. That way the owner of a brand new Roller will pay more than Joe Bloggs in his 15 year old Mondeo. Vehicles over 25 years old to pay a nominal fee, say £30/ year. Works in California, I paid $17/year on my 1969 440 Road Runner and $250/ year for my wife's Mustang.