Government to re-think road tax

[Cavcraft]

Soz but this seems to come up once a year or so on here so 'same as last time'

[Justin Case]

The answer is simple. The incentives to buy the Smugmobiles have been too successful (eg my neighbour has recently swapped his Mondeo diesel for a 3-series diesel, no doubt saving shedloads on company car tax as well as everything else.) Therefore increase the tax on these until the law of diminishing returns cuts in, ie a further increase would result in less revenue, as appears to be the case now with fuel duty. Further increases for everyone else would be counterproductive as they would use their cars even less and tax revenues would either stay level or even go down

 

In fact I can see only one snag. Governments of all parties are too stupid to understand even the most basic laws of economics, so they will continue to rape our wallets in the most ineffective (for them) way and we will carry on paying more tax with nothing to show for it

[Micrashed]

The gubberment are quite frankly shit when it comes to basic economics. Your average O'Level student could do a better job to be honest.

Tax, its a necessary evil in the world, the Gubberment want money to build ships and furnish second homes in London, how do they raise this cash? Tax. Simple.

So they want £1000 to buy a new Aircraft carrier and pay the wages for the Navy. So they lump a penny on a pack of fags and fags go up to 2 and a half pence - the fag company get a penny, the Gubberment get a penny and the shopkeeper gets his hap'enny for selling them.

 

So 100,000 packs of fags are sold and the Gubberment are happy. Then a new minister decides that he wants a new carpet and some Chippendales in his flat in Mayfair and this is going to cost £1000, so they decide to lump another penny on fags and hope that they still sell 100,000 packs - only now they dont sell so many because some previous customers either decide that they cant afford threpence ha'penny or that they will buy theif fags from Dodgey Dave who brought a metric shitload back from Marbella in the back of his Regal Supervan. The Gubberment dont raise as much as they thought they were going to, so decide to put another penny on fags and make the price Fourpence ha'penny....

 

And so it goes on, rather than realise that by pushing the tax up they are killing the goose that lays the golden egg the Gubberment insist of trying to tax the soft targets more and more.

 

Poll Tax riots anyone?

 

Mr Bo11s idea of monthly tax / direct debit and reducing the administration has some merit, as does reducing the price so that it encourages more people to use the resources and hence get more tax...

Personally I reckon that it'll be about 5 years before we all have little black boxes in our cars and pay-as-you-go driving/tax as well as a big brother style monitoring for insurance companies - accelerating too fast? Cornering a bit too hard? We'll put your premium up. Etc Etc.

[willswitchengage]

Again, that's not entirely true, tobacco duty revenue rises in real terms every year, against increases in duty that should "deter" smokers.

 

Regarding petrol duty increases - pump price inflation in recent years has been far smaller than inflation in insurance and repair bills (all modern cars are shi...etc). When the average premium is over a farsand and as is the annual fuel bill and depreciation, spending an extra £100 on tax is something of an afterthought.

[warren t claim]

If the gubberment scrap VED and lob it onto the price of fuel I can assure you that I'll probably end up owning about 20 cars.

[Micrashed]

If the gubberment scrap VED and lob it onto the price of fuel I can assure you that I'll probably end up owning about 20 cars.

Oh yeah! I got a tax rebate today of £300 and its burning a shite size hole in my pocket - I feel the need, the need for rust.

[Cavcraft]

If the gubberment scrap VED and lob it onto the price of fuel I can assure you that I'll probably end up owning about 20 cars.

 

None of which you'll be able to afford to run at about six fucking quid a litre.

[Station]

Why don't they manage the money coming in overall better? PROBLEM SOLVED.

[In The Pit]

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.

 

I agree with all of that, good post.

[gtd2000]

Why don't they manage the money coming in overall better? PROBLEM SOLVED.

 

You'd need to remove the Government from the whole process in that case

[nigel bickle]

Just a softening process.

 

Time will show their true intentions..

[Bobthebeard]

Truly hope they* don't have a rethink on LPG duty and increase that also! That would be typical government thinking. Encourage people to go down the 'green route and save money' option and then pull their pants down when they do....

[dieselnutjob]

I am paying £600 per year for three cars before they even turn a wheel and that's really annoying. In my opinion the tax disc can be dumped and replaced with a round insurance certificate with some kind of ref number that can be easily checked on the internet or a mobile phone. Lost revenue can be made up with congestion charging (like London) and fuel duty.

We need a national congestion charging system rather than a city by city approach, and it should be possible to pay automatically by direct debit everytime that you enter a congestion zone rather than getting fined for not paying.

The foreign competition that hits hauliers could be solved with a vignette for anything over 7500kg instead of the tax that they are currently paying. This would increase revenue because they would get a vignette charge for every single truck on the road, not just the UK registered ones.

[Richard]

Truly hope they* don't have a rethink on LPG duty and increase that also! That would be typical government thinking. Encourage people to go down the 'green route and save money' option and then pull their pants down when they do....

 

The only reason they haven't is because LPG hasn't really caught on.

[Pete-M]

I'm against the idea of congestion charging or little black boxes in the cars. Screw that.

 

I'm also against RFL being spent on schools / hospitals etc, but Im merely a motorist. Nobody asks me.

 

Double the fuel tax on diesel, promote LPG, tax foreign drivers (like the Swiss do) and charge HGVs for using motorways between 07:00 and 21:00.

[RobT]

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

 

Mr B has my vote! I've always said buying car tax should be simple, none of this cross checking nonsense. You're handing money to the exchequer so you'd think they'd make it as simple as possible. I'm off to buy tax later but only have a printout from directgov of the MoT status for my new motor, I fully expect a quizzical look from the bod behind the counter when I present the docs.

[gtd2000]

I think the reality is that the Government expects to tax the motorist at least the equivalent of a "Fiver" per gallon no matter how the car is fuelled, even if it ran on fresh air.

[willswitchengage]

Double the fuel tax on diesel, promote LPG, tax foreign drivers (like the Swiss do) and charge HGVs for using motorways between 07:00 and 21:00.

 

Most of the rest of Europe taxes diesel less as they realise that true value adders like commercial vehicle drivers use diesel, petrol is just used for recreation, basically.

 

I think the minimal tax already on LPG is an incentive enough but I there really needs to be more VED discount than the measly ten pounds or whatever it is these days.

 

Do the Swiss tax foreign drivers? I drove there last year without paying a penny other than in parking and diesel costs. We didn't buy a vignette and went cross-country instead, but all drivers, Swiss or otherwise, need one to use the motorways I thought.

 

A "night discount" would only work if some nationwide BLAIRZ BRITAIN surveillance infrastructure existed, and some haulier's cost-benefit analyses already find that night driving is cheaper. That's the market working without OMG STATE INTERVENTION, right?