‘Luxury’ car tax….a first world grumble

I don’t think it’s jealousy in most cases

I think you’re probably right. It’s just that when anything comes up about discretionary spend here, the threads seem to become polarised along broadly political/class lines with a tinge of what looks like envy. I suppose its a bit naive expecting it not to. It’s the usual suspects, faux Wolfie Smiths, laying tenuous claim to their father’s toolmaker heritage to legitimise their very strong views on what other people should or shouldn’t do or what’s reasonable or unreasonable in their eyes.

Apparently it’s OK to buy multiple properties but not OK to buy other stuff. I don’t mean to pick on anyone specifically but this is a good example. This overlayed with the ‘I grew up in a cardboard box’ nonsense when all of us on here (probably) have the means to make choices which don’t result in a paucity of bread on the table.

We live in a wealthy society and mostly have the means to buy stuff that, strictly speaking, is not needed. Go and live in Africa if it offends or give your excess away but please don’t preach that ‘your’s’ is the only or right way. It’s your opinion, nothing more.

Reworking VED to become a weight based system for electric cars.

I’m not sure that’ll fly….

3/4 of the current tax/duty is paid on a  ‘the more you use the roads, the more you pay’ basis. A flat fee (which will be north of 4 times the current rate) that’s the same if you do a thousand miles a year or 60,000 does not seem fair.

Tolls on roads?

Trackers in cars?

I have two properties because one was mine and one was my partners – and we really stretched ourselves to do that and were only able to in large part because of having a life without owning cars ( and buying a long time ago).  the money many of you would spend on cars financed this.  Now she is dead I own both.   I do not claim anything except a middle class upbringing.  🙂

There is a huge comprehension gulf here both ways.  My frustration is with folk on here who do not realise how well off and privileged they are.  I also find it pretty incomprehensible how many folk use their cars as status symbols and there have been many examples of this on this thread even tho folk do not always realise this about themselves.  I can think of a dozen things I would rather do with the huge sums of money many of you spend on cars.

I am fully aware of how privileged and rich I am despite having less than many of you

My frustration is with folk on here who do not realise how well off and privileged they are.

….a first world grumble – did you see this – I think the OP does.

 I also find it pretty incomprehensible how many folk use their cars as status symbols

We are lucky enough to live in a free world where we mostly live as we wish.  You have chosen to live in a city and have little use for a car – this is absolutely fine and understandable.  But a lot of people do not live in the same circumstances and do not need preaching to by people who have made different choices or live their lives in a different way.

I can think of a dozen things I would rather do with the huge sums of money many of you spend on cars.

OK, great. Good for you.

Reworking VED to become a weight based system for electric cars.

I’d suggest the following:

Weight based tax brackets for all vehicles – so yes EV’s will pay more on this. Overall might make people think about buying smaller cars that suit their needs rather than the bloated things that are modern vehicles, which would have a better environmental impact than messing around the edges.

Continue with fuel duty as is (or tweak the values slightly – maybe make it so that “mr average 9k miles in a mondeo” would pay the same whether electric or petrol).

Electricity is subject to VAT (as far as I’m aware) so some tax is still being raised from the charging of them. A truly eco tax would be to tax the crap out of non-renewable electricity (for everyone, not just EV charging) and make sustainably generated power tax free – but I can see a number of issues with the implementation of this.

Apparently it’s OK to buy multiple properties but not OK to buy other stuff

Its ok to do either. Just expect to be taxed on it. Maybe we should have a tax on all luxury goods like FunkyDunc suggested. Could use that tax to make essential goods available to those in need.

What about using business vehicles to go mountain biking at the weekend?

Probably half the car park  at Llandegla a few weeks back was full of commercial vehicles being used for private use. All these rich sole traders evading tax.

Electricity is subject to VAT (as far as I’m aware)

That’ll hardly touch the sides. Nearly 40% of what you pay at the pump is fuel duty currently. Domestic electricity VAT is 5%. Given that a home charge EV on an EV tariff costs about a quarter or less per km to run than a petrol car that means the amount raised through electricity VAT will be one 1/32nd of the current fuel duty.

Probably half the car park  at Llandegla a few weeks back was full of commercial vehicles being used for private use. All these rich sole traders evading tax.

Those really making use of tax breaks on their vehicles for private use are not as easy to spot.

Work vans at the trail centre…. if they’re really rich… you’d expect them to have a hobby vehicle as well, not just their trades van.

On the other side… the only people I know with Teslas (no company branding or adaptation for work use) run them though their companies, as the tax advantages of doing so are huge. They are ultimately just their own cars, almost entirely for private use.

how would you like to see a similar amount of dosh raised for our collective coffers?

I’d like a tracker. More you drive the more you spend. Perhaps with a multiplier of emisions and weight. And if its going to be on value then at least make it linear, not some arbitrary cut off point set some time ago, since which time prices have skyrocked. It’s ridiculous that the ‘expensive car tax’ applies in equal measure to both a 2nd hand skoda and a factory fresh Ferrari.

There is a huge comprehension gulf here both ways.  My frustration is with folk on here who do not realise how well off and privileged they are.  I also find it pretty incomprehensible how many folk use their cars as status symbols and there have been many examples of this on this thread even tho folk do not always realise this about themselves

Who on this thread has indicated they use their car as a status symbol? Unless I’ve missed someone specifically saying this then that’s just an assumption you are making about their motivation based on your own prejudice.  As someone who claims to have not owned a car in 40 years, I genuinely don’t think you are the best person to be commenting on the motivations for the choices people make in their car purchases, as you clearly have zero interest in them. It’s no different than someone who has no interest in cycling questioning why a cyclist would want to spend 3k on a bike.

To your other point..I realise exactly where I sit in the overall wealth scale. Quite high fortunately (in the overall scheme of things).  there is no doubt 40k is expensive, i couldnt justify paying that for a car. But in the context of new cars it’s actually just above average, which is I think (hope) what people are trying to say.

Either that or there are some very rich folks on here..

Reworking VED to become a weight based system for electric cars.

Whilst sensible, I suspect you’d need a very non-linear scale to do it, and it would probably still be better if it accounted for the list price as well.

As a thought experiment think of three cars and their owners.

1 ) Richey Rich in his new Range Rover-E

2) Average Andy in his 3rd hand Hyundai

3 ) Little Lee in his little Citroen Ami

Richie Rich can and should be taxed based on his 3.5t virility advert.  Maybe on a sliding scale from “eyewatering” in year 1, to “pass the soap” in year 10.

Average Andy, his Hyundai inevitably will weigh the same as a Range Rover because that’s just what batteries do.   But he doesn’t have £100k to spend on his car so it’s not like he could shoulder the burden of paying the same tax either.

Little Lee, there still needs to be a reward built into the system for doing the right thing and buying a sensible car. But (the Ami aside) most will still be pretty heavy, the original leaf was still 1500kg.

So to make it fair it’s IMO going to have to look more like

0.05 x list price x ((GVW – 1200)/1000) So a 100k RR weighing 3.5T pays £11500 % in Y1, the leaf costing £25k would pay £375 (<1200kg would be the new zero rated band).  Then reduce it to 0.045, 0,.04, 0.035, etc over 10 years.  Yes the aim is to make cars expensive. Cars have got both bigger and more numerous, so the sticks need to do the same.

Then a variable rate that averages about 10p/mile.  Higher around town (because you should be walking or using public transport), £1/mile probably makes it comparable to the nus fare.  And higher on motorways and DC A-roads (because you should be on the train), so around 20p/mile which would make it about the same as most trains.  Lowest on smaller A and B roads because that kinda hints at those awkward journeys that aren’t on either the train or bus network.

^ a lot of thought has gone into that!

I’d go with

Cost of car when new ( tax brackets which rises in increments of 10k and reduced by a percentage every year its taxed)

× emisions

× weight

× miles driven (regardless of road)

That would penalise the folks who do the most polluting and screwing up the roads through always using their cars, whilst at same time take into account the ability to pay.

Someone with a big posh car who never drives it may pay the same as a daily driver of a smaller car, but I don’t see that as a bad thing as far as roads and environment is concerned

So you see people in £200k houses driving £100k cars. Bonkers. But if that’s their priority, so be it. Who are we to judge?

Who indeed. It’s a stone’s throw away from right wing bollocks about immigrants with flat-screen TVs. Say you live on your own, your work means you’re on the road for 8 hours a day and your house is somewhere to keep a kitchen and a bed (so “just a tool” if you like), where does it make most sense to spend money?

please don’t preach that ‘your’s’ is the only or right way. It’s your opinion, nothing more.

I think it’s human nature to make decisions and then decide that everyone else is wrong. Like, few folk wake up going “I think I’ll make a wrong decision today.”

I said this before about speeding. We all drive at a speed which we deem to be correct, which may or may not be in line with posted limits. Instantly, anyone going slower than us is a doddering fool who is under the feet and shouldn’t be on the road because they’ll “cause an accident”; anyone faster than us is a reckless maniac who’s going to kill someone.

Just for discussion, where does something like a Porker GT3 RS (or similar) fit in? Very expensive, big polluting ICE but weighs as much as a kitten’s fart.

Edge case perhaps but there’s loads of fancy, l/w Carlos Fandango mobiles around for the (presumably) super wealthy and they’d forgo some of the ‘almost as heavy as an HGV’ tax in the proposals above.

I think it’s human nature to make decisions and then decide that everyone else is wrong.

Very likely.
But it’s one thing knowing/thinking this and another making a hobby out of vociferously expressing your thoughts as the law.  This applies to cars, bikes, pets, schooling, houses, travel, cutting the grass, etc, etc.

Just for discussion, where does something like a Porker GT3 RS (or similar) fit in? Very expensive, big polluting ICE but weighs as much as a kitten’s fart.

Edge case perhaps but there’s loads of fancy, l/w Carlos Fandango mobiles around for the (presumably) super wealthy and they’d forgo some of the ‘almost as heavy as an HGV’ tax in the proposals above

They would if they are never driven. But they’d still get hammered on the initial price element, plus the fact every time you start it up a baby Robin dies so they pay through the teeth for that too.

The cheapest tax would still be on small cheap evs that are driven for essential purposes only. And If you drive a shiney new 6l Bentley every day you will get hammered, and rightly so.

And there will be a world of variation in between.

It obviously would be far too complicated to implement,  but it would certainly be fairer

Instantly, anyone going slower than us is a doddering fool who is under the feet and shouldn’t be on the road because they’ll “cause an accident”; anyone faster than us is a reckless maniac who’s going to kill someone.

Guilty.

Instantly, anyone going slower than us is a doddering fool who is under the feet and shouldn’t be on the road because they’ll “cause an accident”; anyone faster than us is a reckless maniac who’s going to kill someone.

Guilty.

Just for discussion, where does something like a Porker GT3 RS (or similar) fit in? Very expensive, big polluting ICE but weighs as much as a kitten’s fart.

911s are not very light. they weigh 1.5 tonnes. to put that in perspective an MX5 weighs 1040kg, a gr86 is 1300kg and a pug 308 is as little as 1100kg. They are light compared to an M5 (2.5 tonnes), but not compared other sports cars (a caterham can be had under 500kg)

big polluting ICE

It will be less polluting than most ICE cars on the road.

^ a lot of thought has gone into that!

I just started with the “sensible” solution of figuring out what rates would roughly end up with the same tax as we currently have, but with a new way of achieving therm.

~10p/mile is about what fuel duty achieves.

0.05 x list price x ((GVW – 1200)/1000)  is roughly inline with the luxury vehicle tax but accounts for weight too, the hypothetical upper-mid range £40k electric car would end up roughly where it does now.  On reflection GVW should probably be kerb weight, although that might be easier to fudge by taking seats, batteries etc out until after sale. A bit like Subaru used to install the “STI Type-UK” kits after type approval to get round emissions rules.

In reality I don’t think it really matters whether you made VAT 50% on new cars, or kept VED at about £250/year.  The VAT would just inflate 2nd hand prices by a similar amount so while a 2nd hand car technically doesn’t pay VAT, in reality a 1yr old car isn’t 20% cheaper as a result, the VAT is effectively just amortized over the life of the car. The idea of effectively deferring it over the first few years of the cars life just makes it somehow more palatable.

FunkyDuncFree Member
big polluting ICE
It will be less polluting than most ICE cars on the road.

If it had a 1.0 ecoboost maybe, but it doesn’t.

For ICE’s the current system seems to work, messing about with road pricing and VED for those seems like a distraction when in a few years there probably won’t be all that many on sale.  Euro 7 is bringing SCR (Adblue) to petrol engines, which will probably kill off ICE engines in anything below mid sized mid-range, and the whole salary sacrifice, BIK tax is currently doing that for mid rage and above.  In a few years discussions about taxing ICE’s will be about as relevant to HMRC as the VAT rate on cashmere codpieces.  For the benefit of society at large they should be taxed out of existence, but  it won’t really concern the exchequers bottom line.

Who on this thread has indicated they use their car as a status symbol?

I number of people were grumbling about “poverty spec” cars. I would suggest this at the very least implies this.

I am also enjoying that any view that cars are a big fat waste of money is jealousy. Honestly, I drive around in my Dacia wondering why people spend so much on cars…often these are people who think I spend a lot on bikes……

I number of people were grumbling about “poverty spec” cars. I would suggest this at the very least implies this.

No it doesnt. Not sure if I used that expression, but I’ll freely admit that I find bottom of the range cars dull and uninteresting, and usually not as comfortable. It’s got nothing to do with Cost or having them as a status symbol. Up until 2021 I happily had a 2004 saab on my driveway that cost me a grand (see other thread). It was by far the cheapest car on my street (value wise), but I loved it.  it’s not as if I couldn’t afford something nicer if id wanted to either. Hardly the car of a man who wanted to show off his wealth to his neighbours  im sure youd agree. And I’d much rather have something like binners ancient vrs than a brand new base model hyundai costing 10 times as much. Because it’s got a bit of character and is a fun engaging drive despite it being 20 years old.  If you have zero interest in cars then that may make zero sense to you, but please stop questioning my (and others) motivation for what car I buy.

Also..i specifically said I didn’t think it was about jealousy.  But just because you think they are a massive waste of money (and many would agree), doesn’t mean they are bought purely for vanity.

Hasn’t this thread run out of steam yet? Who keeps stoking the fire? Maybe stop cranking it up as it’s getting too drawn out!

They are ultimately just their own cars, almost entirely for private use

My e-vehicle salary sacrifice allows me to lease a new car before tax for my own use. I don’t (yet), but the government has decided that this is an appropriate tax efficient means of stimulating the take up of electric vehicles. But not half-cab pick ups. Of course the unintended consequence is that no new electric cars are being paid for at list price, and now they are hitting the second hand market, residuals have plummeted to about what the real cost was rather than the list cost.

The yet refers to the new Renault 5. Tempting as a run around to go with the other old but nice car. But my 16 year old CRB has just passed another MOT with no maintenance and will not die!

In a few years discussions about taxing ICE’s will be about as relevant to HMRC as the VAT rate on cashmere codpieces.

Umm…

ICE vehicles are going to be sold in the UK at least until 2030. Given that they can last for 20 years that’s be go in to be a lot of them on UK roads until 2050 at the earliest.

(And the chairman of Toyota has recently said that they do not expect EV take up to reach more than about 30% of the total vehicle sold in the foreseeable future)

If you have zero interest in cars then that may make zero sense to you, but please stop questioning my (and others) motivation for what car I buy.

But you reply with such long posts that fail to get to the point!

Maybe I just don’t like the word poverty being associated with buying a car. I see people in poverty every day, they don’t have cars, it just smacks of a either arrogance, trying to show off,  lack of understanding about how far too many live or a complete and utter lack of empathy

But you reply with such long posts that fail to get to the point!

Apologies.. I’ll be succinct so you understand.  You are completely wrong about my motivations for buying a new car.

Hope that clears it up for you…

Weight on it’s own would be a pretty dumb way to class vehicles for VED. Presumably the idea behind using weight is it’s determining the impact of that vehicle but without taking annual mileage into consideration it’s way wide of the mark.

Maybe I just don’t like the word poverty being associated with buying a car

A better term is Utility spec – steel wheels, unpainted bumpers. A modern day equivalent to a 2CV or Series Landrover. Closest I’ve found is an old shape Berlingo or the first Dacia’s but even those have gone upmarket. I don’t want the frills or gadgets of modern cars.

I number of people were grumbling about “poverty spec” cars

That is an ironic term.  People grumble about low spec cars because they like the optional extras on cars, not because they care what others think about their cars.

Presumably the idea behind using weight is it’s determining the impact of that vehicle but without taking annual mileage into consideration it’s way wide of the mark

That is already rolled into the large amount of tax on petrol and diesel.

Going back a couple of pages:

 I don’t find my worth in material goods.  I find it in friendships and experiences.  I feel sorry for those who need to buy stuff to prove their own value

Anti-snobbery is JUST as bad as snobbery, because it’s basically the same thing.  You own a nice bike don’t you TJ?  Because you ride, and you want to appreciate something that works well whilst you’re using it. That’s the reason I have kept the nice car I have – because I love to travel to places that are accessible by car, and I love driving this particular car. Because  it drives really well.

You also spent money restoring an old motorbike, because you love what that bike represents and what it is. And you presumably love how it rides. Well, that’s not that different to people who like certain cars.  Undoubtedly there are some shallow folk who buy cars just to impress others, but there are a great many more who keep nice cars (old or new) for the same reasons you have your nice MTB and your motorbike.

Intersting article on Autocar today stating how the average age of a car is growing. The following comment was particularly notable for this conversation (well, the start of it at least!):

According to Philip Nothard, insight director at Cox Automotive, a key factor is the rising price of new cars, up 129% over the past 15 years from an average of £22,868 to £52,342. This is almost 50% above inflation across the same period,” he said.

“The average diesel car is now 149% more expensive than its 2009 equivalent and the average petrol 93% more.

The cars are also bigger heavier faster with more gadgets.

Also safer, generally better to drive and more economical too.

Interesting to note that people who think EVs are very expensive are probably thinking back to the last time they cared about new car prices. I thought they were very expensive then I realised how expensive new ICEs had also become.  The main difference in the market is the lack of EVs at the cheap end – because you can’t absorb the battery cost in the price of a small car. That said I’d far rather have a 3 year old EV than a brand new Toyota Aygo.

Like bikes then. (@tj)

Oh yeah, re weight – I think 15 years ago was probably the nadir, they’ve been getting slightly lighter since then. My 2006 Passat was 1472kg, looks like a similar car is now 1430kg – with more gadgets too.

The average diesel car is now 149% more expensive than its 2009 equivalent and the average petrol 93% more

I’m not sure the average list price is a particularly useful metric. Diesel makes up almost no new sales these days, and I can’t think of a new fiesta-sized car thats available with a diesel any more, and almost no focus-sized cars (maybe the golf is still around?) – whereas 15 year ago they were common.

Interesting discussion..

The bit that I don’t fully understand is that the scheme was introduced in April 2021 at £40,000.. we’re now at the end of 2024 and yet it remains at £40,000. Adjusted for inflation it should be £48,413.95.

Everything has got more expensive. As it keeps getting mentioned, the list price of a Passat Estate 1.5 R-line was £ 35,390.00 in 2021, the same car now is £43,780. That same car now falls foul of the luxury car tax because the amount hasn’t been adjusted to keep up with inflation, yet student loan interest rates and other government money making schemes see regular inflation/interest rate reviews. Seems the government just wants to ensure they keep increasing the ‘tax’ on us.

Seems the government just wants to ensure they keep increasing the ‘tax’ on us

Well you know governments don’t increase tax for the fun of it, especially given they know full well no-one likes it.