[Closed] Osborne brings back road tax!

What an utter funt.

Still a tax on emissions though.

? Instead of ved or as well as? Emissions based or flat rate? Ring fenced for transport?

Bah! too late posting 🙂

All the money raised from VED is going to a roads fund.

What's the rate for zero emission vehicles?

He didnt say.

Is there such a thing as a zero emission vehicle?

How does it change? My car is currently £158(?) every six months.

Osborne later denied that he was an "utter belmlord".

Onzadog - Member
? Instead of ved or as well as

wanmankylung - Member
He didnt say.

hora - Member
Is there such a thing as a zero emission vehicle?

a bike?

Not after a prawn phall and two pints of Guinness, no.

No rise in fuel duty with rates continuing to be frozen

Major reform to vehicle excise duties to pay for a new road-building and maintenance fund in England

New VED bands for new cars to be introduced from 2017, pegged to emissions - 95% of car owners will pay £140 a year.

From BBC

I hope that means that Prius owners will no longer get away paying nothing, when their cars are actually evil

haha, true! 🙂

I am paying £265 a year for my 2005 1.6 Toyota Corolla automatic petrol so what's the big deal? 😮

I hope that means that Prius owners will no longer get away paying nothing, when their cars are actually evil

The manufacturing processes involve some pretty exotic and toxic substances. That said, I've absolutely nothing against zero-emission vehicles, provided they're made to sound like 1970s Italian V12s.

[ninja edit]: When I'm running the country, I'm going to ensure that this requirement is passed into legislation.

95% of car owners will pay £140 a year.

I'll believe it when I see it.

It's still not called "Road Tax" though, so we still have a get out clause when tackled by knobs.

95% of car owners will pay £140 a year.

I'll believe it when I see it.

for [b]NEW[/b] cars, which are almost all on strict emissions limits anyway.

for NEW cars, which are almost all on strict emissions limits anyway.

...which they don't comply with.

So, for us thicko's then..

He's changing the "tax" bands for vehicles from 2017 applying to New cars only and calling it Road Tax, correct?
Current vehicles will continue in a VED way, correct?
Or from 2017 New cars only will be subject to VED and Road Tax ?

And, all this based on emissions?

Either way Lads, Tax is Tax, it's just the point and cost level you pay innit.

...which they don't comply with.

It's still not called "Road Tax" though, so we still have a get out clause when tackled by knobs.

Not really, as by the sounds of his statement it now will [i]actually be used to pay for roads[/i], which is usually the thrust of the "You don't pay road tax" nonsense.

Thanks George you belm.

Also dupe thread: http://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/you-dont-pay-road-tax-1

WTF - we don't need more roads, we need a varied transport infrastructure and incentives to get people onto smaller vehicles and EV's.

For once I agree with Chewkw.

How is my my 1.6 petrol taxed like it's personally ripping penguins a fresh one and pays tax on the petrol too, and a Prius which has 80kg of lithium under the boot is free and doesn't pay tax on it's fuel (which is mostly coal and therefore even worse than oil).

WTF - we don't need more roads, we need a varied transport infrastructure and incentives to get people onto smaller vehicles and EV's.

Have you not heard? Theres going to be a new choo choo between London and Birmingham. Its going to cost the same as giving the entire population a gold plated unicorn each. Oh... then there's [url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/25/the-guardian-view-on-network-rail-the-great-northern-power-cut ]this[/url]

Its even more laughable than Prescotts old 'Integrated Transport Policy'

Seems fair to me that if you can afford a new car then you can afford to pay road tax. It was always going to have to be revised as more and more cars became exempt. It just wasn't sustainable.

Good news that they will actually spend money on the roads. Lots more tax should be locked to spending like this. People might not actually mind paying it then.

I just poked Carlton Reid and he is already on the case:

http://www.bikebiz.com/news/read/tories-resurrect-cyclist-baiting-road-tax/018100

Seems fair to me that if you can afford a new car then you can afford to pay road tax. It was always going to have to be revised as more and more cars became exempt. It just wasn't sustainable.

No problem with that part - it's the fact it is to be reinstated as a "road fund" to pay for roads that is the issue.

[img] [/img]

The whole point of Churchill's dislike for the road fund was that it gave motorists the idea that they owned the road to the exclusion of others.

As the great man stated: [i]"It will be only a step from this for them to claim in a few years the moral ownership of the roads their contributions have created"[/i]

That is NOT good news for cyclists!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-33447106

[i]New Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) bands are to be introduced, with revenues eventually going towards a new Roads Fund, the chancellor has announced.

For cars registered after 1 April 2017, VED will be transformed into three bands - zero, standard and premium.

George Osborne said the "standard" charge of £140 would cover 95% of all cars. Revenues will be paid into the Roads Fund from 2020-21.

The chancellor also said that fuel duty would remain frozen this year.

Mr Osborne said: "There will be no change to VED for existing cars - no one will pay more in tax than they do today for the car they already own."

He added that the £140 rate was less than the average £166 that motorists pay at present.

However, the new rates will not apply in the first year after registration. There will be special first year rates linked to a car's carbon emissions.[/i]

And apart from creating a whole new system, or in reality two systems to run in parallel, this does what exactly?

And apart from creating a whole new system, or in reality two systems to run in parallel, this does what exactly?

Opens the door for them to start taxing other road users (i.e. cyclists) so that they "pay their way"?

Or cut cycle funding because it isn't "paid for".

a Prius which has 80kg of lithium under the boot is free and doesn't pay tax on it's fuel (which is mostly coal and therefore even worse than oil).

Careful, you almost got some of that right.

I agree with you mostly, but remember there's more to emissions than end to end CO2.

But in any case - it's an incentive at purchse time, and people do seem unreasonably attracted to £15 road tax per year, even though £140 is a tiny proportion of total cost of ownership.

We're all doomed 😯

sounds like an excellent way to reduce funding for road building/maintenance to me

VED raises 7bn or so a year?

the highways agency must spend that on traffic cones alone 😉

kimbers is right. The "ring fence" may prevent additional taxpayers money being used to top up the road fund...

Does this mean we have to ride on the pavements now?

AS for "emissions", this sometmes refers to NOx emissions which cause health problems in cities, and sometimes refers to cutting greenhouse emissions from burning fossil fuels.

Electric cars are better then petrol/diesel ones regardless. People usually start adding up the Co2 emissions from digging up and burning the coal to make the electrics, but forget to apply the same co2 calculations to the cost of extracting, transporting and refining crude oil from under the sea .

Electric motors have other advantages too, which is why its being used for high performance cars like the Koenigsegg, McLaren P1 etc.

Burning carcinogenic respiratory illness causing fossil fuels on built up areas is stupid
Bring on the leccy cars !

and
[img] [/img]

If the standard covers 95% of cars, it looks like they are removing any incentive for smaller economical cars.

A taste of the future:

[img] [/img]

Brian Cooke, ex-Chairman of London TravelWatch and [url= https://tfl.gov.uk/corporate/about-tfl/how-we-work/corporate-governance/board-members ]current board member of Transport For London[/url].

That is utterly depressing ^^^^^

Twiter bomb campaign on the blinkered troll ?

It's not about money for me. I'm lucky enough to have a 9 mile off road commute. I bleedin hate driving due to all the ****s on the road. Riding and getting knackered and covered in shite is a dream compared to sitting in traffic next to some 19 yo idiot female who's smoking and tuning her eyebrows whilst checking her Facebook bollocks.

Ooooo. Tad ranty!

They are going to need to raise a bit more money before they start paying for new roads. Motor tax revenue barely covers the cost of dealing with road crashes.

https://twitter.com/beztweets/status/555767128796954625

I do not understand how stupid people like Brian Cooke get into such positions of power!

Just googled some other things that guy has said.

His name is going on my enemy list. Moronic red faced, obese bigot.

I wouldn't mind paying a token tax if it meant I could take up the whole road and was taken seriously.

I assume if cyclists had to pay then so would horses and possibly pedestrians?

[img] [/img]

Taxing bikes /horses/ pedestrians. One step away from an oxygen tax....of course the ****s in parliament would be exempt as they are oxygen thieves.

Or cut cycle funding because it isn't "paid for".

Ofcourse it does not make sense and ofcourse it would be unenforceable, that does not stop people propsing it as an idea and using the road tax argument against cyclists. The fact that the idea of sticking VED into a raod fund is pointless anyway as the raods coast more than what is raised by VED.

The fact that the idea of sticking VED into a raod fund is pointless anyway as the raods coast more than what is raised by VED.

What's the rate for zero emission vehicles?

Nothing. But what constitutes a zero emissions vehicle? http://www.autoexpress.co.uk/car-news/consumer-news/92131/budget-2015-new-road-fund-and-car-tax-overhaul-announced

[i]"George Osborne said the "standard" charge of £140 would cover 95% of all cars. Revenues will be paid into the Roads Fund from 2020-21."

"He added that the £140 rate was less than the average £166 that motorists pay at present."[/i]

Call me daft, but isn't this going to make buying a new, powerful car far more attractive than buying a second hand one, whereas you're better buying a second hand Prius or Polo Blueline which have lower fuel consumption and emissions? This is almost coming across as a middle class-to-wealthy tax break for salesmen. I suppose it's more VAT in the short term, but about as environmentally friendly as a small nuclear explosion in the longer term.

Seems Brian Cooke has received flack - his tweets are now protected.

This is almost coming across as a middle class-to-wealthy tax break for salesmen.

Exactly that.

He [i]supposedly[/i] brought in the system because as the car market moved towards lower emissions (i.e. the entire point of the existing system) they were losing revenue.

So the best way to get that revenue back is apparently to give a massive tax break to the worst polluters and make those low emission hippies pay for it ??!?

Yep - that'll help us hit our CO2 target and improve air quality!

Seems Brian Cooke has received flack - his tweets are now protected.

they were before. And if he suspects you are a cyclist then you get blocked.

I'd like to see car tax gone completely and replaced with more fuel duty. It seems mad that I could only drive 100 miles per year in a 1.2 Fiesta and have to pay the same VED as the king of the salesmen doing 50,000 miles per year in his A6. Applying for a tax 'disc' doesn't serve the same purpose as it used to as license, insurance and MOT checks are all electronic now anyway, so there's no need to show proof of insurance/MOT at the post office. (AFAIK, most people already do it online anyway, so there's no physical check of documentation)

If you drive 10,000 miles per year and get about 40mpg, you use about 1100 litres of fuel. Just stick another 15p per litre on fuel and there's the £166 average VED. And if you use more fuel, you pay more. Seems fair enough to me. They'd have to start phasing out VED though, but that would be easy enough. Pick a date, say the start of September 2016, and make sure nobody can buy tax that expires after that. If your current VED expires in July then you can only buy 1 month's worth to get you through August, then bump up the prices on the 1st of Sept, that way nobody double-pays but you don't have to deal with the hassle of refunds.

It seems mad that I could only drive 100 miles per year in a 1.2 Fiesta and have to pay the same VED as the king of the salesmen doing 50,000 miles per year in his A6

It's meant to be an incentive at purchase time to get a lower emission vehicle.

It's meant to be an incentive at purchase time to get a lower emission vehicle.

And if you're spending £20,000+ on a new car, is an extra £100 on VED going to make any more or less of a difference than an extra £100 on fuel duty due to lower mpg?

Utterly predictable. Utterly depressing.

"He added that the £140 rate was less than the average £166 that motorists pay at present."

With the amount of zero or £30 tax cars available now I bet the £166 figure will be below £140 by the time it comes in.

As has been said, they brought in the lower bands to get people in more efficient cars. The car makers responded and made most of their vehicles fit in the lower bands so Gideon has seen revenue drop and doesn't like it.

It'll be interesting to see what the levels are set at. The 95% band will have to be very broad, say 50mg to 300mg. Seems like a fail to me as people will just buy bigger cars/engines. I know I will.

But the emissions depends on how much I use it

You, and the five or six people after you who use it too.

It's about changing the profile of the cars on the roads. There is already a lot of tax on fuel as well, which should discourage you from unneccessary mileage.

And if you're spending £20,000+ on a new car, is an extra £100 on VED going to make any more or less of a difference than an extra £100 on fuel duty due to lower mpg?

It seems to - people seem to notice the VED figure more than the fuel economy, for some bizarre reason. I had a bloke boggling at my £15 VED compared to the £200 or whatever for his Civic Type-R. Never mind the 60mpg vs his 25mpg...

Abolishing VED would save a fair bit of cash.

Think about the cost of applying, policy, enforcement (man power, equipment, legal costs), reminder letters, as well as the cost of providing the facilities to renew (techies managing the system, people managing the techies, managers to manage the managers).

It's a fairly large cost to the tax payer that is almost entirely bureaucracy. It could go to front-line services if they just added the duty to fuel costs. I'm sure they could offer some tax break to haulers to lessen the impact to that industry - they seem to subsidise most private industry anyway.

I had a bloke boggling at my £15 VED compared to the £200 or whatever for his Civic Type-R. Never mind the 60mpg vs his 25mpg...

Yep, sadly VED is more immediate and understandable than mpg difference.
That's just human nature..

[img] [/img]

Doesn't help that we cling to using mpg when fuel is sold in litres.

An easy way to make it much less abstract would be to require all cars to list the "pence per mile" (based on annually fixed average petrol/diesel/electric/LPG prices).

e.g.

Let's assume they are both petrol and take a representative price of £1.20/litre

By my reckoning...

The 25mpg Civic costs 21.816 pence per mile.

And Mol's 60mpg hippymobile costs 9.0924 pence per mile.

That makes the difference pretty clear.
If you are doing a 10 mile commute each way, 5 days a week then that's about a twelve quid difference per week just on your commute.

If I had my way, all cars would be fitted with a taxi-style meter that used this to tell you how much each journey cost.

Might make more people realise that sometimes paying a couple of quid on the bus isn't really such a bad option!

You can't avoid paying the tax but you can drive less to prevent spending too much on fuel.

The 25mpg Civic costs 21.816 pence per mile.

And Mol's 60mpg hippymobile costs 9.0924 pence per mile.

That makes the difference pretty clear.
If you are doing a 10 mile commute each way, 5 days a week then that's about a twelve quid difference per week just on your commute.

'only' £12 a week is a good argument for the Civic tbh, and i dont even drive! Thats less than most pay for a nice phone (yes im ignoring car cost, cos they will!) but 10 mile each way dosnt make the typical 10,000 miles/year, so you need to find the extra miles.

It difficult trying to force change when looking at small number like pence, even a few hundred£ a year is little difference to most people when they get a nicer car as a result.

It difficult trying to force change when looking at small number like pence

I'm not sure about that - petrol prices are quoted in pence - people can get very worked up by a rise of a few pence and will drive a few extra miles to get to the garage that is 3p cheaper.

Thats paying more for the same thin tho. If that was true for a product (the car) everyone would already be driving a lupo or other tiny car. They want to pay little as possible but they wont switch to a poorer alternative, they will just pay the premium for the 'premium' product.

Well, hate to say it lads but VED has had no effect in London. There are more LR's, RR's, Cayennes, RR sports, Discoverys and now sports, big engined Evoques, 911's, Ferraris et all blatting around here.
As for Prius, they're Taxis and we all know what Taxis do.
This Car Tax will have no effect what so ever to curb large engined/big emissions vehicles.

Might have an effect in the Regions, but here? Nah.

Yeah kens 25 quid a day levy on big engines would've made a difference, not this

Vehicles should be paying tax based on their use of the road. I'd be happy with that whether it be based on footprint or weight.

VED vs MPG is obviousl when you work it out but people by and large are idiots.
the tax band thing really does seem to work. (and if the anecdotal info here doesn't do it for you then the fact that pretty much all the car makers tweaked their engines to fit into the nearest lower band should)

Well, hate to say it lads but VED has had no effect in London.

Not according to Gideon. From his [url= https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/chancellor-george-osbornes-summer-budget-2015-speech ]budget speech[/url]:

Vehicle Excise Duty was used to fund our roads, but not anymore.

And because so many new cars now fall into the low carbon emission bands, by 2017, over three quarters of new cars will pay no VED at all in the first year.

This isn't sustainable and it isn't fair.

If three-quarters of new cars are low-emission then that suggests to me that there is an increasing demand for low-emission cars, pushed by things like VED and congestion charges.

Ok so my views are from 2 points, being here and looking at them and my mates buying them 😆
When I ask them why they need such a huge 4x4, I get a look of disdain only second to that of killing someones Mother 🙄
They a) don't care & b) have bckets of cash tht this doesn't even register.

Car Tax and VED means nothing.

As for congestion charging, if you live inside the Zone you get a reduction, most of my mates do and they don't care about that either.

There really are a lot of people who don't care.

And the great news is that those people who don't care are getting a £300 tax break, while those that do care are getting a £140 tax increase.

Because that is "fairer" 🙄

pushed by things like VED and congestion charges.

I think the company car tax thing makes the most difference tbh. It's quite punitive isn't it?

Of more effect than tax or mpg are the costs of repairs tothe systems that keep emissions lower.

Clutch type expensive bills.

Cars are going to have a much shorter life time!

I thought car manufacturers were now making their engines/ exhuasts in such a way that they had a lowboutput under not/ ved test conditions but quite different in the real world
I

I agree, I can't see why this Tax is going this way either. But, on the ground, my mates have changed cars (well 4x4's) once every 9/10 mths. On mate has just chopped in his 1yr old RRSport V8 (not 1year old actualy) for the new VolvoXC90.
Now this isn't a one off, two other mates have changed their 2yr old RR's for new ones. Both have probably done less than 15k between them.

Just sayin'

But you have to wonder at the backroom badgering from the likes of RR to the Gov't about falling, or possible, falling of sales.. Well since most of the Gov't runs around in RR's and big Mercs..

I don't have an answer, can't see the need to add in another Tax on top of an existing one which was born out of a need to cut emissions.

Agree but they dont just thow the old ones in the garbage.

Someones somewhere is usin them till they get hit with a big bill