It Had To Come!

[stompe]

Road tax black hole: Seven out of ten new cars pay nothing for year http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3058284/Road-tax-black-hole-Seven-ten-new-cars-pay-year-green-exemptions-cost-Treasury-millions.html @MailOnline

[FROSTYBALLS]

Must confess that road tax isn't something I've ever really been bothered about when changing car.

What is more important to me is whether the car provides what we want from a car - for example as my partner is a massage therapist, for her car, a massage table must fit in the boot, with or without the seats folded forwards, and the tailgate opening must be wide/low enough to accommodate the table.

Her current i20 (which fits the above requirement) was one of those which, in terms of road tax, was nil for the first year, and has been £30 in subsequent years - but for us that's a side benefit.

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Having low or zero road tax is a small saving overall, but we have two petrol, automatic cars in our household and only pay £20 per year in road tax. Lovely :)

It's a waste, especially for private owners. That £230 a year is £20 a month (near enough). That's half a tank of juice, or half your insurance premium, for what? Just for the Government to spend on their usual glorification.

[MEP's Yaris GS]

Road tax black hole: Seven out of ten new cars pay nothing for year http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3058284/Road-tax-black-hole-Seven-ten-new-cars-pay-year-green-exemptions-cost-Treasury-millions.html @MailOnline

I see it as a none event, for most its the first year only, and there are enough juice drinkers making up for it to balance the books from what I can see.

[cbcdesign]

They should scrap this ludicrous tax altogether. Its a nonsense. A Prius owner can drive 20,000 miles a year and emit more pollution than a higher performance car driven by a self employed person that works from home and does just 4000 miles a year but the latter pays road tax. All tax should be on fuel. The more a person drives, the more they pay, the bigger and less efficient the car, the more they pay, Its fair and its simple.

[unclepoo]

There`s enough tax on fuel already....but for me, the saving in road tax pays for 3/4 of the years fuel we use. So happy with our hybrid, should have got one years ago.

[kithmo]

Road tax black hole: Seven out of ten new cars pay nothing for year http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3058284/Road-tax-black-hole-Seven-ten-new-cars-pay-year-green-exemptions-cost-Treasury-millions.html @MailOnline

I see it as a none event, for most its the first year only, and there are enough juice drinkers making up for it to balance the books from what I can see.

and there have been enough gas guzzlers out there for the last 14 years, since they introduced the CO2 based VED scheme and virtually doubled the VED for them, to more than compensate for the loss of the last 12 months.

[kithmo]

They should scrap this ludicrous tax altogether. Its a nonsense. A Prius owner can drive 20,000 miles a year and emit more pollution than a higher performance car driven by a self employed person that works from home and does just 4000 miles a year but the latter pays road tax. All tax should be on fuel. The more a person drives, the more they pay, the bigger and less efficient the car, the more they pay, Its fair and its simple.

Totally agree even though it may cost me more, it is a fairer system. But I do think they should lower VAT on fuel as it's not a luxury but a necessary item for most.

[MEP's Yaris GS]

They should scrap this ludicrous tax altogether. Its a nonsense. A Prius owner can drive 20,000 miles a year and emit more pollution than a higher performance car driven by a self employed person that works from home and does just 4000 miles a year but the latter pays road tax. All tax should be on fuel. The more a person drives, the more they pay, the bigger and less efficient the car, the more they pay, Its fair and its simple.

Nope it would never work - by doing what you suggest the price of EVERYTHING would go up!!

Not something which many will allow, let alone be able to cope / live with.

[PeteB]

It's never that simple - if you do a lot of miles like I used to, something like a Prius becomes incredibly cheap to run, and charging a bit more for petrol, or road tax would have made virtually no difference.

Someone spending £80,000 on a Range Rover isn't going to switch to Prius (or even Lexus hybrid) to save a few hundred a year on road tax or to treble their miles per gallon.

Scrapping road tax in favour of adding a few pence per litre at the pumps was proposed in a budget many years ago (1970s I think), but the government of the day tried to be too greedy and were forced to withdraw it from the budget when they were out voted at several parliament sittings.

The principle made sense, do away with one tier of administration and bureaucracy, reduce possibilities of non payment that road tax suffered. If they'd played sensible and made it a tax neutral switch, it might have gone through.

I can't find any reference to it using Google, but remember thinking at the time that a driver of an average 1300cc family car, expecting some 30-35 mpg, and driving the then 'average' 12,000 miles a year would pay twice as much. Even someone in a 1000cc mk 1 Mini doing 6,000 miles a year would hardly be better off. I think it would have quadrupled the motoring taxes the Government received compared to the road tax revenues at the time. It wasn't palatable for anyone.

After the election, I think which ever bunch of lunatics runs the asylum will have to start taxing and charging to get people out of the worst polluting cars, particularly those producing lots of NOx gasses, which probably means forcing people to scrap or have expensive modifications to pre EURO 6 diesels, many of which will be barely two years old!

I'm amazed some big cities haven't been forced to follow the Paris action last year when for some weeks only half of all vehicles (except EVs and Hybrids) could drive on any one day. But the absolutely massive fines heading the way of the nation and some cities for breaking strict laws on pollutions level day in day out will, I fear, force some very drastic and unpalatable action fairly soon now.

[FROSTYBALLS]

No tax is going to be fair for everyone.

Like it or not, for Government the current system works, brings them in over £6 billion per year, evasion is reportedly low (0.6% in 2013/14 from DVLA's Annual Report 2013/14), and the system is becoming less expensive to administer through increasing usage of digital services.

[MEP's Yaris GS]

I'm not on about how it'll affect people running their car. More the impacts for haulage etc. Those boxes on 18 wheels that delivery everything you find in the supermarket only do 4-8mpg. Lump the tax on fuel and as I've said absolutely everything will have to go up in price to cover this. It's the end consumer that will pay.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Not just haulage - bus and presumably train (diesel locos) fares will also increase to cover the increased cost of fuel.

[cbcdesign]

I don't follow your argument at all MEP. We are simply moving the money spent on road tax directly to the price of fuel instead so goods prices don't have to go up at all and I don't see why people wouldn't like it either. Its fair, its simple, high millage drivers pay more, low millage drivers pay less, small cars pay less, big cars and lorries pay more, it simplicity itself. Some people love to complicate things unnecessarily hence the current mess we have which is both unfair, expensive to administrate and unpredictable for the treasury too.

You are right PeteB, it would not make much difference to a Prius driver and sure, your wealthy Range Rover driver wont stop driving one to save a few hundred quid in vehicle tax. With the tax on fuel instead then we are in a similar position then to what we have now, the Prius driver pays very little if anything extra whilst the Range Rover driver pays quite a lot more. That sounds perfect to me!

Last time I looked by the way tax on HGV's which move goods to supermarkets was a LOT of money , between £1300 and £1,800 per year. Are they going to object to scrapping it and paying a tiny bit more for fuel instead? I don't think so. Its fairer for lower millage haulage companies too. There are ways in which over taxing the haulage industry could be avoided with a bit of thought.

Trains needn't be affected, they don't buy their fuel in roadside filling stations!

It has to be a cost neutral switch but it could work if it was costed and priced sensibly.

[MEP's Yaris GS]

I don't follow your argument at all MEP. We are simply moving the money spent on road tax directly to the price of fuel instead so goods prices don't have to go up at all and I don't see why people wouldn't like it either. Its fair, its simple, high millage drivers pay more, low millage drivers pay less, small cars pay less, big cars and lorries pay more, it simplicity itself. Some people love to complicate things unnecessarily hence the current mess we have which is both unfair, expensive to administrate and unpredictable for the treasury too.

You are right PeteB, it would not make much difference to a Prius driver and sure, your wealthy Range Rover driver wont stop driving one to save a few hundred quid in vehicle tax. With the tax on fuel instead then we are in a similar position then to what we have now, the Prius driver pays very little if anything extra whilst the Range Rover driver pays quite a lot more. That sounds perfect to me!

Last time I looked by the way tax on HGV's which move goods to supermarkets was a LOT of money , between £1300 and £1,800 per year. Are they going to object to scrapping it and paying a tiny bit more for fuel instead? I don't think so. Its fairer for lower millage haulage companies too. There are ways in which over taxing the haulage industry could be avoided with a bit of thought.

Trains needn't be affected, they don't buy their fuel in roadside filling stations!

It has to be a cost neutral switch but it could work if it was costed and priced sensibly.

I don't follow your argument at all MEP. We are simply moving the money spent on road tax directly to the price of fuel instead so goods prices don't have to go up at all

If the price of fuel goes up, then the price of moving the goods you buy in the shops goes up, this will affect everything and is simple economics. A manufacture or distributor isn't going to swallow these costs.

Get rid of RFL and Increase fuel duty per liter - how much, a penny, 5 pence?

Assuming £1800 a year RFL, that's 39,473 gallons at 1 pence a litre being added on to cover this £1800, if they use anything less per vehicle then they're saving, anything more and its costing them. at 6MPG that's about 235,000 miles a year.

It's a simple case of total RFL income vs total L per year sold to everything that currently pays RFL. Are we talking an amount as small as putting 1p on each litre of fuel to cover to total income of RFL (and more potentially) or as much as 5-10p a litre? If the latter then it will certainly cost haulage more than RFL does currently, damaging the economy.

[FROSTYBALLS]

"Trains needn't be affected, they don't buy their fuel in roadside filling stations!"

So you're suggesting that just because a company buys their fuel in bulk (which companies such as rail operators, some haulage operators and some bus operators do) rather than at a roadside filling station, any increase in fuel costs due to the abolition of road tax won't apply.

Be realistic !!

[Grumpy Cabbie]

Stick the extra tax on diesel whilst also allowing rebates for hauliers - but not buses which would encourage them to introduce hybrid and BEV buses.

[FROSTYBALLS]

Stick the extra tax on diesel whilst also allowing rebates for hauliers - but not buses which would encourage them to introduce hybrid and BEV buses.

See http://www.toyotaownersclub.com/forums/topic/167387-court-orders-uk-to-cut-nitrogen-dioxide-pollution/#entry1382881

Some type of action for older diesels has to be on the cards

[FROSTYBALLS]

An alternative to road tax and increasing fuel duty, which the Government has considered and is still an option, is an additional purchase tax on vehicles - whether this applies to new vehicle sales or both new and used isn't known.

[PeteB]

I suspect something will have to come soon - there's quite a bit in the news today about "The UK's highest court has ruled that the government must take immediate action to cut air pollution".

The BBC's take on it can be found here

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-32512152

[Mike169]

Hi All.

Put the road tax in the fuel, scap the road tax and all it's admin costs. Ok it may go up several pounds but it means the people that break up the road surface will technically pay for the repairs. OK i believe it's not bullet proof but the good intension is there. Someone like me who has a Blue Badge and needs a vehicle like a Rav4 for space and being able to get off his drive but does less than 3000 miles a year pays the same as a person that does many more miles and is penalised by the system even though my vehicle has done less than 9000 miles in 3 years. it's a shame Toyota or anyone else hasn't made a 4x4 in an electric vehicle then there would be many happy motorists but it's all down to money and how much they can get from the motorist. Incidentally doing such a low mileage gives me good discounts with Toyota Insurance, lol.

Regards Mike.

[kithmo]

Hi All.

Put the road tax in the fuel, scap the road tax and all it's admin costs. Ok it may go up several pounds but it means the people that break up the road surface will technically pay for the repairs. OK i believe it's not bullet proof but the good intension is there. Someone like me who has a Blue Badge and needs a vehicle like a Rav4 for space and being able to get off his drive but does less than 3000 miles a year pays the same as a person that does many more miles and is penalised by the system even though my vehicle has done less than 9000 miles in 3 years. it's a shame Toyota or anyone else hasn't made a 4x4 in an electric vehicle then there would be many happy motorists but it's all down to money and how much they can get from the motorist. Incidentally doing such a low mileage gives me good discounts with Toyota Insurance, lol.

Regards Mike.

I don't understand your argument mike, as a blue Badge holder you don't pay road tax do you ?

[MEP's Yaris GS]

Hi All.

Put the road tax in the fuel, scap the road tax and all it's admin costs. Ok it may go up several pounds but it means the people that break up the road surface will technically pay for the repairs. OK i believe it's not bullet proof but the good intension is there. Someone like me who has a Blue Badge and needs a vehicle like a Rav4 for space and being able to get off his drive but does less than 3000 miles a year pays the same as a person that does many more miles and is penalised by the system even though my vehicle has done less than 9000 miles in 3 years. it's a shame Toyota or anyone else hasn't made a 4x4 in an electric vehicle then there would be many happy motorists but it's all down to money and how much they can get from the motorist. Incidentally doing such a low mileage gives me good discounts with Toyota Insurance, lol.

Regards Mike.

I don't understand your argument mike, as a blue Badge holder you don't pay road tax do you ?

Disabilities resulting in RFL a exemption are different to those making you eligible for a blue Badge. A lot of blue Badge holders still pay for RFL. My father does for one.

[Mike169]

Yes Keith i still have to pay road tax. A small number of Blue Badge holders don't have to pay and generally these are people that claim PIP benefit and whom are paid at the enhanced mobility rate. To get this benefit you have to be accessed by a 'special' doctor who makes a decision about your personal condition, hence why i feel the tax should be in with the fuel so those that use the roads the most pay for it's repairs at a more proportionate rate.The government already collects it's 'cut' from when we buy a litre of fuel so an admin change would be negligable where as it costs the goverment money to collect the RFL and this expense could be scrapped saving the government money. As we all know the government is making cut backs to reduce out national dep't, to me this is an obvious thing to change if they want an easy money saving unnessary expense.

Mike.

[stompe]

Wouldn't be so bad if the money went on the roads, instead we are funding economic migrants!