Car Tax rant

Joe_Horner

force_ten wrote: »

with the tax range on car going from zero up to about five hundred pounds a year adding money to fuel to cover the cost of road tax is a real non starter

Except that the sole justification for the varying tax brackets is the environmental harm allegedly caused by less efficient cars.

Only, that's very simplistic thinking and fails to take account of the fact that driving habits tend to make far more difference to fuel use than the car itself - you can quite easily take a modern eco-box and drop its MPG into the low 20s, if not high teens, if you put your mind to it.

It also completely ignores miles driven. Someone driving 20k mile per year in their new ultra-efficient (though almost certainly not as efficient as the figures that tax is based on suggest) car will be putting far more nasties into the air than the old pensioner couple who live in the country and use their 20 year old Rover 400 for a 30 mile round-trip to Tesco each fortnight because they can't afford or justify buying something newer or more efficient for those 780 miles a year.

Increasing fuel duty would exactly match the environmental harm people (allegedly) cause by their overall use, regardless of the car they own. This would be a good and fair thing.

AdrianC wrote: »

Exactly. Business users will pay CONSIDERABLY more, especially any hauliers or businesses doing deliveries, and that is only going to get passed on to consumers through increased prices.

I'm afraid the "haulage industry would suffer" argument is actually a non-starter because it could be mitigated so easily.

All the big guys use fuel accounts and it would be an incredibly easy thing to set a "haulage" rate, lower than the main one, just like farmers get with red diesel. That rate would be applied when settling the accounts.

Even for the smaller operators who pay cash as they fill, a lower duty rate could be very easily indeed incorporated into their tax returns.

In fact, such a system would have the added benefit that the rate could be used as another little control knob for the politicians to play with when next wrecking the economy!

AdrianC

Joe_Horner wrote: »

Except that the sole justification for the varying tax brackets is the environmental harm allegedly caused by less efficient cars.

Only, that's very simplistic thinking and fails to take account of the fact that driving habits tend to make far more difference to fuel use than the car itself - you can quite easily take a modern eco-box and drop its MPG into the low 20s, if not high teens, if you put your mind to it.

It's an encouragement to buy/drive more efficient vehicles. Drive an efficient vehicle badly, it still uses less fuel and emits less CO2 than driving an inefficient one in the same way.

It also completely ignores miles driven.

Fuel duty doesn't, though.

I'm afraid the "haulage industry would suffer" argument is actually a non-starter because it could be mitigated so easily.

All the big guys use fuel accounts and it would be an incredibly easy thing to set a "haulage" rate, lower than the main one

So if you exclude the fuel used by hauliers and businesses, the rise in fuel duty would have to be several times the 12p/litre figure. It might even have to double the current 58p/litre fuel duty, for the exchequer to break even. And if the exchequer doesn't break even, then that revenue has to be raised from elsewhere.

Iceweasel

marlot wrote: »

I agree.

They may have had to do something different for lorries. (Some come over from the continent with enough fuel for their entire trip, so don't fill up in this country). But a vignette system could have covered that.

There is a vignette system already in place for trucks visiting the UK.

It started last April - but little publicity - hence many people still think that 'foreign' lorries pay nothing to use our road network.

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/hgv-road-user-levy

It even applies to Republic of Ireland trucks entering Northern Ireland which is not going down too well in that part of the UK.

[Deleted User]

I would have taxed the car from 1st March and just driven it home untaxed. I did this last year when I bought a car at the end of a month.

Joe_Horner

AdrianC wrote: »

It's an encouragement to buy/drive more efficient vehicles. Drive an efficient vehicle badly, it still uses less fuel and emits less CO2 than driving an inefficient one in the same way.



Fuel duty doesn't, though.



So if you exclude the fuel used by hauliers and businesses, the rise in fuel duty would have to be several times the 12p/litre figure. It might even have to double the current 58p/litre fuel duty, for the exchequer to break even. And if the exchequer doesn't break even, then that revenue has to be raised from elsewhere.

But if you want maximum environmental impact, driving existing cars more economically has far more benefit than producing new ones for a few extra MPG.

It's also likely to have road safety benefits because economic driving tends to use many of the same principle (extended observation, anticipation, earlier braking etc) as safe driving. So changing peoples habits in this way is win-win.

The "buy better" principle is out of the reach of a great number of people in less affluent areas. Many in rural communities need cars for employment, shopping, and so on but suffer from low income and will only ever be buying 10 - 20 year old "bangers".

They may well do below average mileage each year because they're not fitting in several theatre trips a month, weekends in the Cotswolds, and a couple of holidays a year, but they get penalised by existing car tax rules by not being able to afford an ecobox in the first place.

It's also much easier for people in that situation to budget their motoring by the fuel in their tank than budgeting for even a monthly lump payment and, by driving more carefully and cutting out the extra trips, they can save money they badly need.

As for the commercial use, you simply set the rates so that they end up (initially) paying the same in fuel duty as they do currently in VED and fuel duty combined. That give no overall impact on either them or the total amount other motorists have to pay to keep the exchequer happy, while allowing flexibility if needed in future.

AdrianC

Joe_Horner wrote: »

But if you want maximum environmental impact, driving existing cars more economically has far more benefit than producing new ones for a few extra MPG.

Absolutely. But if that was taken to the extreme, the new-car motor industry would collapse - losing millions of jobs across the EU, let alone the world. It's also an irrelevance, since the age of the national vehicle fleet remains roughly static, as new cars replace old ones, and individual vehicles trickle-down through various owners.

The "buy better" principle is out of the reach of a great number of people in less affluent areas. Many in rural communities need cars for employment, shopping, and so on but suffer from low income and will only ever be buying 10 - 20 year old "bangers".

And a 15yo "banger" now is CO2-taxed, because that's trickled down over the last decade and a half since it was introduced.

They may well do below average mileage each year because they're not fitting in several theatre trips a month, weekends in the Cotswolds, and a couple of holidays a year,

Odd. I seem to recall the usual cry is that those of us in rural areas do above-average mileages, because of the distance needed to go to school/work/supermarket. It's a 40-mile round trip to the nearest supermarket that isn't a small local Co-op for me, for a start.

but they get penalised by existing car tax rules by not being able to afford an ecobox in the first place.

My nice sensible everyday car does an easy 45mpg average on petrol. The diesel version achieves an easy 65mpg average. It's old enough, though, that it's pre-CO2 taxed, so that diesel would be £230. If that was CO2-taxed, it'd be roughly band C, £30/year. But, because of the very crude pre-CO2 banding, it'd be the same as my 16mpg Land Rover.

How much will you be putting on a litre of diesel to keep the total raise below £30/yr for that?

It's also much easier for people in that situation to budget their motoring by the fuel in their tank than budgeting for even a monthly lump payment

£2.50/month for that Band C car? Less than £10/month, for band D? Even for that pre-CO2 £230, it's less than £20/month.

As for the commercial use, you simply set the rates so that they end up (initially) paying the same in fuel duty as they do currently in VED and fuel duty combined.

Set it for who? The specialist shop who do 60k/yr in a Transit at 30mpg? Or the haulier who does twice that mileage in a 5mpg HGV?

Cornucopia

It's not that long ago that a typical petrol car was returning 25-35mpg, and diesel 30-45mpg.

Times have changed. Whilst there is an ongoing debate about the actual MPG returns, the quoted figures for many vehicles are now double those figures. Choose the right car, and you're now able to get real-world returns in excess of 50mpg for petrol and 70mpg for diesel. The very newest cars are exceeding those figures. (Citroen C4 Cactus uses lightweight construction to get to a claimed 91mpg).

There are "in between" models that are somewhere between those extremes, obviously. I have no problem with improving driving techniques as well, but I don't see this contributing nearly as much as technical improvements.

For those people running older cars, the first low emission vehicles are now 10-year+ old cars on the second-hand market. You can buy a 2003 Citroen C3, for example, with £30 road tax and a price tag of c. £1500. (There may well be cheaper examples available with a bit of hunting).

AdrianC

Cornucopia wrote: »

It's not that long ago that a typical petrol car was returning 25-35mpg, and diesel 30-45mpg.

The one I mentioned above is a 1980s model. There have always been some very economical cars about, and the biggest surprise for me is not how those levels of economy have spread across the range, but how the best have not been bettered in real-world conditions.

Guest101

sirloyneofcowes wrote: »

Sorry if this has been posted before, however just feel I need to rant by the great car tax rip off.

I bought a used car on the 28th February, and traded in my previous car with it.

On advice of the DVLA I declared the old car SORN on 28th February this way I would get a refund for all complete months (so I would lose one months tax completely, but get a refund on five months). I'm happy with this, I'd used the car throughout February so it's only fair.

Now being a law abiding citizen I have to tax the new car before I can drive it off the forecourt. Again, fair enough, I don't want any more points on my licence, or a fine.

However, when I came to do this online, the car tax that I had to buy to drive the new car away was effective from 1st February 2015.

That's right, I had to pay for one month of car tax for a car that I had only owned for one day in that month.

Is it me over-reacting, or does this not seem right? Especially as on top of that, the previous owner would have also lost a months tax too...

Dont have anything to add beyond the law is the law, but this comment is quite contradictory...

Cornucopia

AdrianC wrote: »

The one I mentioned above is a 1980s model. There have always been some very economical cars about, and the biggest surprise for me is not how those levels of economy have spread across the range, but how the best have not been bettered in real-world conditions.

More different cars are more economical than they were, if that makes sense.

I'm most familiar with Citroens and their diesel engines need a good 30k miles to get fully run-in. Although you should be getting good economy from day one, the best won't come until later in the engine's life. Which means that I would expect owners of new cars to be complaining about lower than expected economy. The real test is whether a 3-year old car with plenty of miles on it is the same.

Citroen are claiming the real world economy of the C4 Cactus is close to the published figures, which should be interesting. Not sure about the car's looks, but anything that brings us closer to the psychological 100mpg barrier is a step forward.