Pay by mile to replace fuel duty?

forgotmyname

Basing charges on emissions was a silly idea, so many ways to bypass it.  How does a car use more fuel yet drop the emissions?
Same engine same injectors etc etc... went from a £220 group to a £30 group.

But its using a lot more fuel.  Where are the figures for the emissions whilst a diesel is doing a regeneration?  Wonder how the
emissions stack up if they include that into the data?

Black boxes will be cloned or the data will be faked,  imagine the amount of data being uploaded/downloaded
if every car had a black box.

seatbeltnoob

surely all EV charging points can have the electricity metered and duty charged from that?

failing that have EV makers installed a charge/range meter on them and have owners pay the duty from it?

seems a bit excessive to install all those cctv systems to record all your movements.

Johnmcl7

Car_54 said:

There’s no good reason why the deficiency needs to be made up by motorists, rather than any other class of taxpayers.
However, if it must be, and there are no longer emissions to worry about, why does it need to be mileage-related? A flat rate would be vastly cheaper to collect.

And it would be vastly more unfair to people who use their cars less and it would discourage people from reducing their car use as well.  I get penalised badly enough already by reducing my car usage and not buying a car into the CO2 cheating era and would in no way get penalised further to fund a bonus for others.DrEskimo said:

Car_54 said:

There’s no good reason why the deficiency needs to be made up by motorists, rather than any other class of taxpayers.
However, if it must be, and there are no longer emissions to worry about, why does it need to be mileage-related? A flat rate would be vastly cheaper to collect.

Agreed. That's how current new cars have VED charged following the first year. Just a flat rate, with an additional charge for those over £40k.

It was only last year that EVs over £40k stopped paying the 'luxury car tax'. Not unlike congestion charge. EVs currently get a 100% discount but that is due to end soon.

But those petrol/diesel cars also pay fuel duty which is what this thread is about, do more miles pay more fuel duty which can't be carried across to electric cars.

Goudy

Currently, there's a flat rate of tax (though sliding) that is VED and a tax that is variable based on miles/use you do, fuel duty.

Any new system will probably emulate that and I think the answer to all this is already in place.
VED, fuel duty and zonal charging.

Fuel duty will stay, full stop.
Even though they plan to phase out the sales of ICE vehicles, classics and hangover ICEs will still find petrol and diesel available in small quantities which will still attract fuel duty which is easily collected.

VED will be introduced to EV's at some point, again easily collected.

The zonal charging is already in operation in many places or planned locally already.
Congestion and emission zones around towns and cities can easily be renamed and switched on to include anyone picked up on the system, hence a price to pay for everyone entering these zones.

It's also more than possible to price motorways, plenty of other countries do already and we do have some already in the UK. Perhaps something like the Swiss motorway vignette to use the motorways, that's pretty easy to adapt to.

Again these sort of road pricing via zonal charging systems and motorway charges are either already available or are easily implemented and the cash easily collected.

Anyone hanging on to a ICE that's not yet classic will pay for all three, further discouraging ownership.
Your ICE classics may or may not attract some form of VED, though they will still pay a fuel duty and zonal charges.

Eventually when EV's become the norm, a flat rate of tax plus a mileage/use tax that is easily collected will replace the similar system to that of VED and fuel duty and the infostructure is already here or in most cases, already planned or readily available.

Bigphil1474

There's no way the government, daft as they are, are going to bring in a system that levels the costs of motoring when comparing petrol vs electric. They are relying on EV's as part of the plan to be carbon neutral, so undoubtedly even if they did bring in PPM it would be on top of fuel duty. When petrol cars are virtually gone from our roads, expect the shortfall in tax receipts to be made up somehow. A reasonable rate of PPM suggested now, will soon be an extortionate rate because it's easy money for the government to collect.  I'd also expect high VED's to be extended to electric cars once they become the predominant type, and petrol cars go out of production. Motorists are the government's gift that keeps on giving.

Grey_Critic

The Road Pricing idea has been around since cars first went on the road - that is what the idea when the Road Fund Licence was introduced. it has simply evolved. There are lots of theories on how they could bring it up to date and anyone who thinks they are special because they drive an EV and pay nothing are living in cloud cuckoo land. It is only a matter of time.

I am waiting for the advert - fit a SMART meter to your electric vehicle and there will be one.

Grumpy_chap

Possible regulation of public charging points:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-60394567

Not sure what to make of that but I've no doubt the Government could use this "industry requested" regulation as a smoke-screen to introduce a levy of some kind.

I have also read about future EV charge points having smart function so the electricity for car use is identified separate to electricity for domestic use and can be subject to different taxation.  Sounds rather more complicated than taxing public charge points for electricity used.  All the more reason to get a "dumb" EV point now.

Ditzy_Mitzy

Road pricing is completely unworkable in practice and is ludicrous from the environmental perspective.  Live tracking of all cars at all times?  Who's going to do it?  It's likely to require satellites, the launching of which causes cast pollution, not to mention the additional carbon costs of myriad cameras and the like.  

It would be better to keep flat tax rates, but based on the car's gross weight.  That would take into account the likelihood of it damaging the road surface.  

born_again

seatbeltnoob said:

surely all EV charging points can have the electricity metered and duty charged from that?

failing that have EV makers installed a charge/range meter on them and have owners pay the duty from it?

seems a bit excessive to install all those cctv systems to record all your movements.

EV users pay 20% vat on power used for charging @ external chargers compared to 5% for home charging.

Sandtree

born_again said:

The question is just how are they going to work the PPM?

Owner entering mileage each year? Going to lead to " clock the mileage boom" Can't rely on MOT as new cars do not need one for 3 years.
ANPR. Well that going to cost millions to add all the camera's required. As well as a computer system to collect the charge. And we all know how Government IT always runs on budget & on time... 🤣

The whole PPM is fraught with so many issues & that is before they even start thinking about starting to get it prepared. Odds on it would not be ready for 2030 at the rate the wheels of Government work.

More than a decade ago we had two tracking companies approaching us about doing a deal to use their black boxes to introduce black box car insurance (wouldnt be first to market but it was still novel). The company was offering the boxes and IT for free in exchange for them being entitled to keep a psuedo anonymised copy of the data. Their rational was that they were certain the Government would be introducing mileage based VED and they wanted to have the maximum amount of data to sell and most vehicles with their tech in it.

Certainly their view was it could be like blackbox insurance where charging is done not purely by mileage but also potentially factoring road type and time of day.