Pay by mile to replace fuel duty?

Chris_English

peter_the_piper said:

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.

A better, quicker & cheaper idea. Is to re do  the whole VED charges. As the system is already there.
So to start with all historic rates go. ALL cars no matter what age pay based on their emissions.

Starting point for zero emissions (EV) is £100 and then step up by bands as now.

I assumed it would be some form of black box, similar to the ones that learners have. I believe they check the speed, mileage and the way they drive so the software is mostly there. However I would not mind a ved increase of £250 which would cover the fuel duty and as I have a picanto it would be a zero increase.

£0 + £250 = £250

Chris_English

seatbeltnoob said:

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

How would you propose to stop people charging their cars from a normal socket, as we currently do?

[Deleted User]

Put PPM on electric cars only and leave full duty on petrol/diesel cars. Or do what someone else suggested and put VED on all cars including electric.

Emmia

Ditzy_Mitzy said:

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.  

Personally I think this is the best way - smaller, lighter vehicles pay less, larger heavier vehicles pay more...

You'd need to factor in battery weights for the EVs though vs equivalent ICE vehicles.

Sandtree

Emmia said:
Personally I think this is the best way - smaller, lighter vehicles pay less, larger heavier vehicles pay more...

You'd need to factor in battery weights for the EVs though vs equivalent ICE vehicles.

So highly polluting but light sports cars pay less than the efficient average family car? 

If you accept that you need to raise £Xbn and so the question is really just what behaviour you are trying to drive by how you divide up that amount amongst car owners... not really sure why you'd want to drive people to lighter vehicles? If you are trying to do some form of efficiency on EVs then surely doing a comparison of battery capacity and range is much more realistic than weight which penalises cheaper cars to sports cars with the same battery weight. 

caprikid1

"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.  "

I think people tend to get suckered into thinking that any tax is somehow related to the way in which it is collected or where it is collected from, it is just tax end off. Who did you think was going to pay your furlough payments , bounce back loans, furlough fraud, PPE contracts for government mates. You and I , tax has never been about fairness it's about how can we hide it and make people forget about it.  We tax alcohol and cigarettes not to discourage consumption, completely the opposite, we tax them because people will continue to drink and smoke. Every year the government juggles tax around to try and persuade us to consume differently , they fill the gap elsewhere, insurance tax , extra VAT extra NI.

Sandtree

caprikid1 said:
We tax alcohol and cigarettes not to discourage consumption, completely the opposite, we tax them because people will continue to drink and smoke. Every year the government juggles tax around to try and persuade us to consume differently

Seems rather contradictory statements there @caprikid1.... we tax to drive behaviour but for tobacco we tax it because we know it wont drive behaviour. 

Certainly people will be modelling what the consequences of say introducing the sugar tax will be in terms of people consumption and therefore additional taxes collected but I'd argue all really are intended to drive behaviour... its just a case of long term nudging rather than seismic shifts which would be achieved through outlawing things rather than taxation.

Taxation is only one of the levers that is used but if you look at tobacco consumption has gone from 40% to 16% of the adult population in the UK within my lifetime in almost a year by year decline (1996 being the only year where smokers proportionally increased... no idea what happened then)

caprikid1

"Seems rather contradictory statements there @caprikid1.... we tax to drive behaviour but for tobacco we tax it because we know it wont drive behaviour."

On the surface it may appear contradictory but we tax for different reasons ultimately all are to raise revenue to pay for the fraud and corruption of this current government and so big business's don't need to take the burden they should. 

Sandtree

caprikid1 said:

On the surface it may appear contradictory but we tax for different reasons ultimately all are to raise revenue to pay for the fraud and corruption of this current government and so big business's don't need to take the burden they should. 

We tax for one ultimate reason which is to cover the state expenditure and in most cases there will be a target number to get to depending on exactly how big the current bunch of politicians think the state should be. There are arguably different reasons on how we decide to distribute the burden of taxation and there will always be challenges when the people deciding that have to go through a popularity contest every 5 years. Again ultimately it is almost always to drive behaviour but that behaviour could be at the ballot box rather than the shopping cart.

By big business its normally meant as multi-national business and the reality is that its ultimately difficult to calculate the real tax impact is... stop the practice of being able to crystallise profits in lower tax locations and you drive up prices which drives up how much the state has to payout and/or consider reducing other taxation so that the electorates buying power doesnt get reduced. Plus in post Brexit world there is plenty of signs that the UK is wanting to be one of the low tax but not tax haven type countries so better not knock them too much. 

Bigphil1474

An average car driver drives about 7,000 miles a year (average pre-pandemic - https://www.bymiles.co.uk/insure/magazine/mot-data-research-and-analysis/). In a petrol car that averages 10 miles per litre (45mpg), they would use 700 litres of petrol a year. The tax element is currently about 55% of the cost of petrol according to the RAC, say 80p from a 1.45/l cost,  so that driver pays about £560 a year in tax (duty plus VAT). That's a heck of an amount to put on VED, and is about 8p per mile. Imagine if they ditched fuel duty and replaced it with a flat rate VED where everyone paid £560 a year more, there'd be uproar. 

PPM seems the only equitable way to do it, but I can't see the technology working across the whole of the country. Maybe requiring EV cars to automatically record and share that data would be the only solution, while petrol/diesel drivers continue to pay it on fuel.