Not Irish? Lucky you!

kevinshally · Nov 13, 2007

The 'Green' party here have decided that the 'polluter must pay' when it comes to environment issues. In principle I agree and was hoping that the green party would come up with some way to tackle those driving 80 mile round trips a day so they can live in their home village while others will either take the train or bus or move to the town to avoid spending that time in traffic.
For those that do these journeys thats far enough, but these are the pollutors in my opinion when it comes to cars on the road.
Instead, the best this shower of muppets could come up with was adding 10% to car tax.
In Ireland the car tax ranges from about 150 euro to 1350 euro. My 944s2 is about 1100 a year.
This is already taxing me for having a big engine even though I have a yearly rail ticket and don't drive much. I just see cars as 'moving art'.
I'm in shock at this proposal, especially as the likes of the 1.3 mazda rx8 with 15mpg will see a reduction in tax as 1.3 is a small engine and so is not a polluter.
Complete rubbish once again from this government.
I'd love to know what woudl happen in the UK if they tried to bully people out of buying whatever car they wanted.
Commies the lot!

John Sims · Nov 13, 2007

What they (conveniently) don't take into consideration is the huge amount of pollution involved in manufacturing and supplying a new car. Similarly disposing of the hulk at the end of its life.

If you consider many lesser cars would have been bought and destroyed in the life of a 944 our 20ish year old cars have a carbon credit equivalent to the manufacture an disposal of at least one if not two lesser cars. We should be heralded as environmentalists not chastised as polluters.

Guest · Nov 13, 2007

Dont get me started on the car tax system we have here in Ireland. It makes me sick to the core. I wouldn't mind so much if we had fantastic roads and could see where our money goes, but alas, we dont and thats the kicker of it all.

I think the tax should go on the petrol instead, the more you drive, the more you pay. Not penalise the driver who hardly uses his/her car.

Diver944 · Nov 13, 2007

ORIGINAL: 422bhp944

I think the tax should go on the petrol instead, the more you drive, the more you pay. Not penalise the driver who hardly uses his/her car.

I hate to say it but I'm starting to agree with you. I remember the fuel protest from a few years ago and no-one likes paying high tax on petrol but when you compare it with the overheads of introducing a road toll system it seems by far the simpler and cheaper option. I know I had a differnt view a few years ago when our family mileage was in excess of 30k miles a year. Now that it is under 15k for work and pleasure I may have a slightly biased view [

]

The cynic in me often leads me to think that all the current UK road charging proposals are just to soften us up that higher petrol tax is the better solution.

One thing I do know is that motorway and inner city congestion is screwing up our country. Luckily I personally see very little of it but I know there are people who get stuck every working day of their lives [

]

mik_ok · Nov 13, 2007

ORIGINAL: kevinshally
I'm in shock at this proposal, especially as the likes of the 1.3 mazda rx8 with 15mpg will see a reduction in tax as 1.3 is a small engine and so is not a polluter.

I'd love to know what woudl happen in the UK if they tried to bully people out of buying whatever car they wanted.

The road tax system in Ireland is indeed daft.

The RX8 is recognised as a 2.6 in most countries as there are twice as many ignition cycles per rev when compared with a 4-stroke reciprocating engine. We get approx 22mpg out of ours compared with 28mpg for similar use of the S2. Pretty crap, but not 15mpg (thank god!).

Unfortunately your latter statement does reflect the UK. Road tax on the highest CO2 producing bracket (which my scoob and a new RX8 both fall into) is now £400 per year, plus we a have humungous fuel duty charge (which is then subject to VAT on top [8|] ).

333pg333 · Nov 13, 2007

ORIGINAL: John Sims

What they (conveniently) don't take into consideration is the huge amount of pollution involved in manufacturing and supplying a new car. Similarly disposing of the hulk at the end of its life.

If you consider many lesser cars would have been bought and destroyed in the life of a 944 our 20ish year old cars have a carbon credit equivalent to the manufacture an disposal of at least one if not two lesser cars. We should be heralded as environmentalists not chastised as polluters.

Hear hear![

]

JM1962 · Nov 13, 2007

ORIGINAL: 422bhp944

I think the tax should go on the petrol instead, the more you drive, the more you pay. Not penalise the driver who hardly uses his/her car.

The simple ideas are always the best.

PJS917 · Nov 14, 2007

ORIGINAL: 422bhp944
I think the tax should go on the petrol instead, the more you drive, the more you pay. Not penalise the driver who hardly uses his/her car.

The tax already does go on the petrol, to tax the motorist more is criminal. It really is time the millions of motorists said enough is enough. I have proposed before we should all leave our cars at home one day and use public transport. The country would collapse and the government would lose millions in revenue from fuel. We might also remind the MP's and lackies they work for us, not the other way around.

There is a good letter in 911&PW this month about the environmentally friendly 944. Worth a read.

knightma · Nov 14, 2007

Peter, the key word here was "instead". I'm in favour, as long as a person driving average mileage in a car with average fuel consumption then ends up paying the same additional tax on fuel that he would have paid in road tax. This gives the incentive for people to use their cars less and get into more efficient cars. A rough calculation shows it would be in the order of 10p extra tax per litre (assuming 12000 miles per year in a 30 mgp car currently paying 180 GBP road tax, someone will no doubt correct me on the true averages).

xenon · Nov 14, 2007

Not only that, it would also stop road-tax dodgers. You couldn't avoid paying your tax, unless you drove off from the pumps without paying. It would also make the SORN procedure unnecessary which caused so much upset.

kevinshally · Nov 14, 2007

The way the Irish Gov seem to work is to penalise families.
I myself do not have kids, however, any family with a 7 seater C8 for eg will be hit for more tax, regardless of if they car pool for bring many kids to footy games etc etc...
A 1.2 litre polo throwing out fumes will be rewarded.
It needs to be based on emissions or charge people more at the pumps.
then again, the biggest scam is the 'stamp duty' tax which is stoping people from upgrading to a bigger house as 7% of the cost price gets paid in cash to the government and then 100% of the house price too.
These guys did get rid of the excise duty (as it was illegal) and then brough in VRT (exact same tax).
Shame.

John Sims · Nov 14, 2007

ORIGINAL: knightma

Peter, the key word here was "instead". I'm in favour, as long as a person driving average mileage in a car with average fuel consumption then ends up paying the same additional tax on fuel that he would have paid in road tax. This gives the incentive for people to use their cars less and get into more efficient cars. A rough calculation shows it would be in the order of 10p extra tax per litre (assuming 12000 miles per year in a 30 mgp car currently paying 180 GBP road tax, someone will no doubt correct me on the true averages).

I'm with you 100% on that (as is Paul Smith it would seem). And it is so obviously fair and simple that one wonders why the (so called) Government don't do it. They don't do it because they can bend more people over and rodger them more significantly with their current schemes.

Consider the following:-

Sales rep. with a national patch drives 10's of thousands of miles a year in his Vectra (replaced every 2 years) making lots of CO2 (or what ever the current trendy pollution is) in the process.

Car nut - Has a stable of high capacity low consumption cars but only uses them for events throughout the spring, summer and autumn (i.e. more than 6 months) but only puts a couple of thousand miles on each car - if that.

The car nut is subsidising the Sales Rep massively in our current system yet his carbon footprint is negligible in comparison.

sawood12 · Nov 14, 2007

Kevin, i'm surprised your tax is so high. Here our road tax is based on CO2 emissions and this year I paid £180 (no cat) and a friend of mine paid £210 for his Alfa 147 2.0ltr twin-spark with all the latest ECU, catalytic converters etc. So our cars can't be that polluting in regards to CO2 at least.

Considering that something like 70% of all Porsches ever made are still on the road this must make Porsches the most environmentally friendly cars ever when you consider the full life cycle of the car.

Pay as you drive via tax on fuel is by far the only fair way to tax the driver. It means it takes care of all the variables. How can you say someone clocking up 5kmiles a year in a 20yr old 944 turbo is polluting more than someone clocking up 12k a year in a Prius. That's just wrong. The problem is fuel is taxed so much you can't feasibly tax it any more and I can't ever see the government abolish road tax without raising tax.

It really annoys me that those making the decisions don't have a clue what life is like outside of London. London's public transportation network is fabulous, but no other city or town outside of London is large enough or has a population density large enough to make the massive investment required to get a similar infrastructure feasible.

The car is a necessity in our modern busy lives. Public transport is just far too inconvenient and peoples time is worth much more than money. I know time spent with my daughter every night before she goes to bed is priceless and i'd miss it evey night if I relied on public transport.

It's about time people started to kick back against the environmental lobby in this country. They have far too much of the say and their principles are based on a whole series of untruth's.

Neil Haughey · Nov 15, 2007

I am with you guys on the fuel tax issue. Problem however will be that heavy users such as HGV operators and white van man will go nuts of diesel goes up by 10p a litre. This is what sparked the fuel protests last time, it wasn't you or I complaining.

Personally I don't have a problem with the cost of transporting goods going up. This is a realistic hit of one believes in all the eco stuff about sourcing local produce etc.

If the government could come up with a special tax break for hauliers then maybe a fuel tax increase would get by without the protests we had last time.

John Sims · Nov 15, 2007

They had pink diesel for agriculture why not a similar arrangement for commercial users?

Guest · Nov 15, 2007

Yeah totally agree with you on that Kevin.... And just for the record in case our UK buddies are not aware. Bertie Ahern got â‚¬38,000 of a pay rise , that means he now earns â‚¬313,000 a year. He gets more than Gordon Brown or George Bush FACT []

I mean Bertie and his flatterers dont give one toss about the poor sod in Co.Kildare who has to get up at 5am to sit in traffic for 2-3hrs - work and then try and be home for his kids bedtime at 7 or 8 in the evening... Makes me want to scream... but the government will probably want to tax that as well [:'(]

Neil Haughey · Nov 15, 2007

ORIGINAL: John Sims

They had pink diesel for agriculture why not a similar arrangement for commercial users?

They could use a special fuel filler neck and hose end to make it impossible for cars to use the truck pump and manage it that way perhaps? ISTR they are alread investigating Europe wide measures to introduce new hose designs to make it impossible for ppl to fill up with the wrong fuel, just extend the scope to cover a special type for commercial vehicles.

sawood12 · Nov 15, 2007

ORIGINAL: Neil Haughey

I am with you guys on the fuel tax issue. Problem however will be that heavy users such as HGV operators and white van man will go nuts of diesel goes up by 10p a litre. This is what sparked the fuel protests last time, it wasn't you or I complaining.

Personally I don't have a problem with the cost of transporting goods going up. This is a realistic hit of one believes in all the eco stuff about sourcing local produce etc.

If the government could come up with a special tax break for hauliers then maybe a fuel tax increase would get by without the protests we had last time.

Exactly - get the majority of commercial traffic off the roads and onto rail (though the rail network would need greatly expanding) and create a bit more space for cars that would ease conjestion nicely.

And while we're at it we should ban slow moving traffic from the roads at rush hour times such as tractors, milk floats, road sweepers, learner drivers etc.

944Turbo · Nov 16, 2007

I think they should get trains off rails and replace with coaches / trucks, they would be far more efficient and it would free up road space. Vehicles with rubber wheels can climb hills so you can lower embankments and raise cuttings. Railways into London are at full capicity but with coaches you can pull over to drop / collect passengers, I forgot the figures but the new york bus lane can handle far more passengers than a london railway line IIRC by a factor of at least 5 those coach passengers all get a seat as well. At each end of the journey lorries could move onto existing road networks to make local deliveries. As the coaches could run more often, say every minute in rush hour, total journey time could be shorter as you would no longer have to wait up to an hour for a train to arrive.
Tony

Neil Haughey · Nov 25, 2007

ORIGINAL: VanhireBoys

Yeah totally agree with you on that Kevin.... And just for the record in case our UK buddies are not aware. Bertie Ahern got â‚¬38,000 of a pay rise , that means he now earns â‚¬313,000 a year. He gets more than Gordon Brown or George Bush FACT []

I mean Bertie and his flatterers dont give one toss about the poor sod in Co.Kildare who has to get up at 5am to sit in traffic for 2-3hrs - work and then try and be home for his kids bedtime at 7 or 8 in the evening... Makes me want to scream... but the government will probably want to tax that as well [:'(]

I guess my uncle Charlie wasn't that bad after all then? (if we are related it is very very distant, honest)

BTW looks like the gov here could be about to go for a mega road tax. The academic idiots (sorry Prof Julia King, is this the best you can come up with for a transport policy!) that the gov pays to advise on these issues have recommended putting the RFL up to £1500 P.A. for high CO2 emissions vehicles.