[Closed] Osborne brings back road tax!

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?

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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..

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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

What I don't understand is, given the cash-strapped budget, why didn't they leave the higher emissions bandings in place?

Is a tax break for high emission vehicles really a priority at the moment?

It is funny how people react to pricing, my aunt was bragging to me that her new car only pays £30 a year VED. She didn't like me telling her that she spent £15 000 to save £130. That and people who trade in their perfectly good 3 year old car for a new one on the basis that it may start costing money as it now needs a MOT 🙄

wrong thread

I've just been reading the [url= https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/443232/50325_Summer_Budget_15_Web_Accessible.pdf ]George's Big Red Book[/url] (PDF).

For those that can't be bothered leafing through it, here is the section on VED and the "road fund":

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Firstly yep, if you emit just 1 gram of CO2 per km then you'll pay exactly the same as someone emitting 255 times that amount.

Because that is "fair".

As is the £1860 tax break for the worst polluting cars.

But don't worry it [i]"continues to incentivise the cleanest cars"[/i].. er.. somehow... Maybe they'll offer smiley face stickers or something.

Secondly, note that (in England) the new "road fund" only covers the "[url= https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highways_England ]English Strategic Road Network[/url]", which is basically the motorways and some larger dual-carriageways.

So at least when some idiot is braying that he pays "road tax" for the "road fund" so he has more right to be on the road than freeloading cyclists, we can reply that the road fund contributes absolutely nothing to the minor roads that we use.

Granted it's not much of a retort - but it's a start!

Oops - my apologies, I misread the table in my anger 😳 - it's not a £1860 tax break.

Current Band M (over 255g/km) rate is £490 a year (£1065 first year).
So it's only a £350 per year tax break (but £935 extra in the first year).

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.

The flat rate £140 covers that for cars then as taking into account safe gaps to front and rear all cars use about the same road space.

Well, Osborne is correct to say that the change incentivizes the cleanest cars (only), but one wonders what will happen to sales of low emitting runabouts, hybrids and the prevalence of other technology like stop/start systems once the new regime is in force.

Sounds like they're aligning it with the push for EV's and autonomous to me.

Or just thick.

Did everyone miss the footnote as well?

"cars with a list price of over £40,000 when new will pay a supplement of £310 per year on top of the standard rate, for five years"

So my nice, reasonable fuel efficient Merc C220, with it's less than 118 CO2s and currently paying £30 per year VED, would under the new scheme be paying £450 per year.

Time to buy that V8 Jag then I think. Will still be paying £450 per year and I can negotiate the £2000 first year off the purchase price.

Cheers Osbourne! 🙂

Cor, looking at the table above it's got the wiff of one of Gideon's pals daring him to do it for a laugh.

It seems idiotic to hit below say 100mg with the same cost as much bigger/faster motors. For those that say it's irrelevant compared to the price of the car you are wrong. Most people will get new cars on some finance deal or other so pay say £350 a month. The choice of paying an extra £3 or £50 a month really does (did) come in to the equation.