Road Tax hike
- Thread starter marlin
- Start date
Not the modern British way. If you can't get what others have without not having to work for it then you should steal it or smash it. I.e its never your fault it is someone elses. Gets a bit scary when it goes as far as it has now even our politicians have had to take notice at what has been becoming more and more obvious over the last 20 or so years! Moan over !
adrian996
New member
Couldn't agree more. Here's a copy of a letter that I wrote to 'Dave' recently. Needless to say, the response was uninspiring! (It's worth bearing in mind that the sole 'policy' for increasing VED was to lower carbon emissions.) [8|]
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
Dear Mr. Cameron,
Re: Car Tax Pricing (VED)
Regarding the above, I feel that I must write to you to express my views on what I feel is both an inappropriate and erroneous method of attempting to lower carbon emissions.
I drive a car which emits 269 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. This puts the car into Band M and it will cost me £440 to tax my car in 2010. I cover approximately 1,500 miles per year in this car. A friend of mine owns exactly the same make, model and year of manufacture car as I do, however he covers a average of 30,000 miles. My friend will be paying the same money to tax his car next year as I will and yet he will be producing 20 times more carbon dioxide as I will in my car due to his annual mileage. Surely this is unfair?
I will produce 5% of his total CO2 emissions from driving this car in one year.
I will cause far less congestion
I will put far less strain and wear on the road system (Road surface erosion, accident rate, etc.)
I understand that the objective for increasing the VED is to ultimately reduce carbon emissions and encourage car manufacturers to produce vehicles that produce fewer CO2 emissions.
With this in mind I do not believe that simply increasing the amount of car tax we pay (regardless of mileage) will achieve your outcome.
I have a suggestion which I feel will be far more effective and a fairer solution.
Most domestic homes have a gas and electric meter. The owner of the home has the meters read by the gas and electric suppliers at a given period. The home owner is then charged for the amount of gas and electric that they have used.
My question is very simple: Why can't car owners be charged for the amount of CO2 that they produce over a given period? We never pay for petrol (or the tax on petrol) that we don't ever use.
All of our car details are now kept on-line. Surely it would be fairer to the individual if their car were to be monitored at every MOT to see how many miles the owner had covered in it over the last year. (It wouldn't matter if the car had changed hands half way through the year as the mileage of the car is recorded in section 6 of the V5 form.) This would provide an accurate record of the mileage covered by the car and subsequently how much CO2 the car had produced. This would be exactly the same method used to calculate a home owners gas and electric bill when they sell their property on to someone else. The meters are read and the bills for gas and electric used up until the owner vacated the property are settled.
My proposal is that the individual then pays for their tax in arrears. This method will have a far greater and positive affect on discouraging people to use their cars. The banding could remain but the owner of the car will be far more conscious of the amount miles that their car is covering over a given period. People will "economise" "" just as they do with their gas and electric bills "" don't leave the TV on stand-by, don't leave the heating on when there's no one in the house "" but in this case, don't take the car out unless it's absolutely necessary.
It took me eight years of running my own business to get enough money to buy my car without having to borrow money from a bank to do so. I have to be honest and say that if I do have to pay £440 to tax my car next year it will probably only encourage me to drive my car even more. I'll feel completely unjustified in owning a car which I cover just 1,500 miles a year in and pay £440 tax a year for "" just to have it sat on my driveway "" and I honestly believe that a number of people will feel the same.
If you tax me for the miles that I cover then I will happily pay my tax for them "" just the same way that I pay for the amount of gas and electric that I use.
If you want to reduce the amount of CO2 that we produce from driving cars then simply increasing the road tax is not going to achieve it.
I'd be very grateful if you would consider my idea and let me know what you think about it.
Yours sincerely,
Adrian.
Rt Hon David Cameron MP
10 Downing Street
London
SW1A 2AA
Dear Mr. Cameron,
Re: Car Tax Pricing (VED)
Regarding the above, I feel that I must write to you to express my views on what I feel is both an inappropriate and erroneous method of attempting to lower carbon emissions.
I drive a car which emits 269 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. This puts the car into Band M and it will cost me £440 to tax my car in 2010. I cover approximately 1,500 miles per year in this car. A friend of mine owns exactly the same make, model and year of manufacture car as I do, however he covers a average of 30,000 miles. My friend will be paying the same money to tax his car next year as I will and yet he will be producing 20 times more carbon dioxide as I will in my car due to his annual mileage. Surely this is unfair?
I will produce 5% of his total CO2 emissions from driving this car in one year.
I will cause far less congestion
I will put far less strain and wear on the road system (Road surface erosion, accident rate, etc.)
I understand that the objective for increasing the VED is to ultimately reduce carbon emissions and encourage car manufacturers to produce vehicles that produce fewer CO2 emissions.
With this in mind I do not believe that simply increasing the amount of car tax we pay (regardless of mileage) will achieve your outcome.
I have a suggestion which I feel will be far more effective and a fairer solution.
Most domestic homes have a gas and electric meter. The owner of the home has the meters read by the gas and electric suppliers at a given period. The home owner is then charged for the amount of gas and electric that they have used.
My question is very simple: Why can't car owners be charged for the amount of CO2 that they produce over a given period? We never pay for petrol (or the tax on petrol) that we don't ever use.
All of our car details are now kept on-line. Surely it would be fairer to the individual if their car were to be monitored at every MOT to see how many miles the owner had covered in it over the last year. (It wouldn't matter if the car had changed hands half way through the year as the mileage of the car is recorded in section 6 of the V5 form.) This would provide an accurate record of the mileage covered by the car and subsequently how much CO2 the car had produced. This would be exactly the same method used to calculate a home owners gas and electric bill when they sell their property on to someone else. The meters are read and the bills for gas and electric used up until the owner vacated the property are settled.
My proposal is that the individual then pays for their tax in arrears. This method will have a far greater and positive affect on discouraging people to use their cars. The banding could remain but the owner of the car will be far more conscious of the amount miles that their car is covering over a given period. People will "economise" "" just as they do with their gas and electric bills "" don't leave the TV on stand-by, don't leave the heating on when there's no one in the house "" but in this case, don't take the car out unless it's absolutely necessary.
It took me eight years of running my own business to get enough money to buy my car without having to borrow money from a bank to do so. I have to be honest and say that if I do have to pay £440 to tax my car next year it will probably only encourage me to drive my car even more. I'll feel completely unjustified in owning a car which I cover just 1,500 miles a year in and pay £440 tax a year for "" just to have it sat on my driveway "" and I honestly believe that a number of people will feel the same.
If you tax me for the miles that I cover then I will happily pay my tax for them "" just the same way that I pay for the amount of gas and electric that I use.
If you want to reduce the amount of CO2 that we produce from driving cars then simply increasing the road tax is not going to achieve it.
I'd be very grateful if you would consider my idea and let me know what you think about it.
Yours sincerely,
Adrian.
^ Instead of auditing miles covered, it would be a lot easier (and cheaper to implement) to just add the cost of road tax into petrol price at the pump. That way you have a direct relationship between CO2 output and what you pay! Some countries I believe already do this (and in fact bundle in insurance costs too).
dereksharpuk
New member
Actually, scrapping road fund licence and putting the price on petrol is a great idea for the following reasons:
1. You then tax usage, not ownership.
2. The thousands of cheats who drive without RFL would be forced to pay.
3. Visitors to the UK who damage our roads would contribute more.
But I take the point that petrol is over-taxed anyway.
1. You then tax usage, not ownership.
2. The thousands of cheats who drive without RFL would be forced to pay.
3. Visitors to the UK who damage our roads would contribute more.
But I take the point that petrol is over-taxed anyway.
Scrapping Road Tax and increasing the tax on fuel to offset the deficit is so obvious as to be ridiculous (that it hasn't been implemented). It is, by far, the fairest way for people to pay for their CO2's and road wear - and, has been noted, for foreign visitors to contribute.
Unfortunately we still need a Big Brother watching over who has legal cars on the road but, I assume, with the computerisation of the MOT system the Police could access that rather than the DVLA road tax data base to see if a car is legal.
For all of us who, for what ever reason, don't use our Porsches regularly the whole, shall I/shan't I SORN it is a real pain. You equally feel cheated if you don't use the car one month when having paid for it. With the hike in tax there is also more incentive to SORN at every opportunity and then re tax only for the months when you have a known use. How much more administration will that take? (I know I am a bad person for SORNing my Porsche rather than use it but I don't have time just to drive it for the sake of it)
Similarly, those how don't tax their cars (track day/race use only) can also contribute relative to their CO2 production in fuel tax.
Fuel efficient cars do not make us more frugal. If anything the opposite is true. Belinda has a V8 Land Rover and, because of the cost of fueling it will often walk to the shops or use public transport to go to our local town rather than drive. If she had a Pious or similar (supposedly) economical vehicle there wouldn't be that incentive.
Unfortunately we still need a Big Brother watching over who has legal cars on the road but, I assume, with the computerisation of the MOT system the Police could access that rather than the DVLA road tax data base to see if a car is legal.
For all of us who, for what ever reason, don't use our Porsches regularly the whole, shall I/shan't I SORN it is a real pain. You equally feel cheated if you don't use the car one month when having paid for it. With the hike in tax there is also more incentive to SORN at every opportunity and then re tax only for the months when you have a known use. How much more administration will that take? (I know I am a bad person for SORNing my Porsche rather than use it but I don't have time just to drive it for the sake of it)
Similarly, those how don't tax their cars (track day/race use only) can also contribute relative to their CO2 production in fuel tax.
Fuel efficient cars do not make us more frugal. If anything the opposite is true. Belinda has a V8 Land Rover and, because of the cost of fueling it will often walk to the shops or use public transport to go to our local town rather than drive. If she had a Pious or similar (supposedly) economical vehicle there wouldn't be that incentive.
Putting the price on petrol is great for people who don't drive (or need to drive) that much. But let's not forget the rural community (because the government certainly does forget). In the countryside the use of a vehicle is not a luxury nor an option to public transport (because in most cases there isn't any). Distances are by definition greater to work/shops/schools/major conurbations. And average income is less.
thboxster
New member
Indeed this is true. We have recently exchanged one of our cars from a 28mpg petrol to a 85mpg diesel. We don't consider the impact to the environment from car usage, it's purely a case of how much does it cost to fill up the tank and run the car - it is now significantly less therefore we are happy to use it more.
Am I the only one content with the status quo then?
I do 10K fun miles a year in my car, and tbh £460 a year on road tax is absolute peanuts in the grand scheme of 911 ownership. That's what, just over four tanks of fuel or less than the cost of one service? We've got it pretty easy here in 997 land as our cars are still not exactly cheap to buy, and if you can afford to buy and run one (brand new or used, makes no difference) then I'm going to stick my neck out and say that £460 a year isn't going to break the bank. It's the cars lower down the price ladder for whom the top band tax hits hardest: An £8k 350Z is also £460 for example, and in terms of percentage of the purchase price that's a far bigger whack for is basically just a Nissan!
Nope, I think I'll happily live with things the way they are right now as once you start putting tax onto fuel instead you'll crucify those who live in the sticks, as Peter says above. If you don't think you're getting VFM on the RFL for the amount of miles you're currently doing, then the only answer is to drive the thing more [
]
I do 10K fun miles a year in my car, and tbh £460 a year on road tax is absolute peanuts in the grand scheme of 911 ownership. That's what, just over four tanks of fuel or less than the cost of one service? We've got it pretty easy here in 997 land as our cars are still not exactly cheap to buy, and if you can afford to buy and run one (brand new or used, makes no difference) then I'm going to stick my neck out and say that £460 a year isn't going to break the bank. It's the cars lower down the price ladder for whom the top band tax hits hardest: An £8k 350Z is also £460 for example, and in terms of percentage of the purchase price that's a far bigger whack for is basically just a Nissan!
Nope, I think I'll happily live with things the way they are right now as once you start putting tax onto fuel instead you'll crucify those who live in the sticks, as Peter says above. If you don't think you're getting VFM on the RFL for the amount of miles you're currently doing, then the only answer is to drive the thing more [
]
dereksharpuk
New member
I once put forward the case here for one car for fun, one car for transport. I proved mathematically that owning a mega economical runabout (bought very cheap) + restricting the miles on the fun car is actually cheaper than just running a fun car. The extra cost of running an additional cheapo is outweighed by the savings made by less service, insurance, depreciation and petrol costs of the expensive fun car.
I live in the sticks, I need a cheap car to get me to the town. but I do own a thirsty car also.
I live in the sticks, I need a cheap car to get me to the town. but I do own a thirsty car also.
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