was always under the impression taxes were fixed for given years

Being applied retrospectivly in many cases complete abolishment of the 0 rated bracket.

My car’s a December 2016 model and is free to tax (going up to 20 quid)  An april 2017 model of the same car with the same engine in the same trim is 190 quid a year …

but we’ve not seen the autumn budget yet, so it’s all a bit of conjecture.

How so ? It’s been planned for April 25 for at least 18 months.

What has been left wide open is room for it to increase by more  in the 2024 budget.

From 1 April 2025, drivers of electric and low emission cars, vans and motorcycles will need to pay vehicle tax in the same way as drivers of petrol and diesel vehicles. This change will apply to both new and existing vehicles.

What is the definition of a low emission vehicle? It sounds like this differentiates them from petrol and diesel vehicles. I’m a bit confused.

It also says changes are coming in 2024. It’s almost the end of 2024 now. I’m still paying £0. When exactly?

I’m only commenting because I literally just bought a car in the zero tax bracket and was feeling smug. Will be gutted if they make me pay £20.

OK, I’ve read it properly now. It says it will move to the first band. I was thinking £0 was the first band but evidently not.

It’s retrospective. It’s not conjecture. Just look on the gov website.

My parents’ electricity bill (not in the UK) comes with itemisation which shows exactly how much electricity they’ve used to charge their (plug-in hybrid) car each month. My father believes that system will eventually be used to levy fuel duty on EV drivers. That seems to suggest the EV fuel duty problem is one that actually has technical solutions.

Personally I’d go with a road charging system combining in-car GPS telemetry phone-home with ANPR validation; surge pricing would be an invaluable tool in addressing pollution events and hotspots, and congestion problems. Most antisocial driving could be abolished almost immediately.

I also find it hard to believe we can’t produce cars capable of supporting a pay-per-mile road pricing system when we’ve been doing the same with electric and gas meters since the beginning of time.

In theory its doable but in practice its really, really hard. You would need to get all the car manufacturers to build in a proper secure write only area and even then it would be basically impossible to really make it read correctly. Depending how old you are you might remember needing to carefully set a cycle computer based on the wheel/tyre size?

Not sure about gas but electricity meters can and are bypassed. A quick google says about 25k cases in the UK a year which are discovered. Some of those are going to be drug farms but with the increase in bills its suggested a growing number of people are doing it. I suspect the drop in manual reading also wont help. Having someone come round makes it harder to hide the bypass.

Not sure about gas but electricity meters can and are bypassed. A quick google says about 25k cases in the UK a year which are discovered.

There are always going to be people who fiddle the system. The number of untaxed cars on the road now is massive. If you make it difficult enough, and the penalties high enough, the vast majority will adhere, quite possibly more than they do now. Forgetting to tax your car is a fairly simple mistake anyone can make. Tampering with recording equipment is not, and easier to deter imo.

Forgetting to tax your car is a fairly simple mistake anyone can make. Tampering with recording equipment is not, and easier to deter imo.

Vehicle based Blockers for black boxes already exist

How would you charge MOT based pay per mile for new cars that don’t need an MOT for the first 3 years?

Charge it at the end of 3 years? If you’re buying something 2.5 years old the value drops accordingly, or it has to be motd every sale. Plenty of ways to make it work

Means ved will be ,~ £500 for the first 5 year if your EV cost more than £40k

This returns to the system under a previous chancellor when the tax for expensive cars in at least their first year was £450. Later years were £0 for my Model S.

Compared to the price of a car and fuel costs VED is not a big cost. I’m unsure that it’s really a big factor in vehicle choice for many.

There’s already a pay-per-mile bunch of taxes in the form of fuel duties and VAT on fuel. The easiest route to raising revenue would be to increase these. No extra tech needed. Petrol and diesel are clearly too cheap given the amount of driving done and the number of folks sat with their engines idling while parked up. Sure, it’ll be an uncomfortable increase but doable compared with black boxes ANPR tracking etc which will cost money and, ans folks have described, increase the cost of motoring anyway.