EV pay per mile - disabled drivers

Herzlos

Retrofitting it to old cars isn't going to be viable though, so I can see it being on cars after a set date with cars before that having a higher flat rate VED. The average lifespan of a car is 13 years so it won't take long before it's not worth doing anything special for the older cars. 

Traditionally big tax changes have never been retrospective either; we've already got completely different VED mechanisms for cars before 2001, 2001-2017 and 2017 onward. 

Each change suits some people and screws others, but at least PPM would be fairer going forward. 

That's assuming we still want to try and disencentivise car usage and emissions, but that'd be better served by making alternatives better. 

ComicGeek

Goudy said:

MattMattMattUK said:

There is no need to introduce a new tax for EVs, just increase fuel duty for a short term boost and in the long term use funds raised from general taxation. 

It won't be long before the state pension increases past the tax free earning limit, so now "granny" on a state pension will share the burden while someone floats around it a £100,000 Audi e-tron for free?

But you conveniently forget that they would have paid over £17k in VAT for that £100k EV when purchased....

EVs cost more to buy in the first place, so surely the extra VAT paid (against the price uplift compared to ICEs) is more than the proposed mileage revenue. The Govt don't seem to provide a break down of VAT revenue, but surely this must be significant.

Goudy

Herzlos said:

Retrofitting it to old cars isn't going to be viable though, so I can see it being on cars after a set date with cars before that having a higher flat rate VED. The average lifespan of a car is 13 years so it won't take long before it's not worth doing anything special for the older cars. 

Traditionally big tax changes have never been retrospective either; we've already got completely different VED mechanisms for cars before 2001, 2001-2017 and 2017 onward. 

Each change suits some people and screws others, but at least PPM would be fairer going forward. 

That's assuming we still want to try and disencentivise car usage and emissions, but that'd be better served by making alternatives better. 

I don't think the government will give up that notion too easily.

I can't see them happy with a generation of cars that won't be paying anything.
Plus in a few years our streets will look like Cuba! Full of knackered bangers that are free from a usage tax.

Let's not forget any cost in retrofitting won't be paid for by the government and they won't lose sleep if it's difficult for the owner.

We'll have to wait and see what it looks like but just out of interest, does anyone know of a system in use today and has been for years.
That's retrofitted to hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
That record when a vehicle is driven and is enforced by law?

Herzlos

There won't be a generation of cars not paying anything, the pre-PPD cars will get hammered with VED. 

We *should* be like Cuba with old cars everywhere, but cars don't last that long on our cold, salty island. 

The closest system I can think of is smart meters; mine transfers my gas/electric meter numbers every hour which is excessive.  The only reason you couldn't do the same with an odometer is that you'd need phone signal for it to work, but those few remote cars would just need to update any time they managed to get a signal which might mean infrequent huge bills. There will probably be a handful of cars that never come into a mobile signal, but I don't think it's worth worrying about. 

Grumpy_chap

Herzlos said:

Traditionally big tax changes have never been retrospective either; we've already got completely different VED mechanisms for cars before 2001, 2001-2017 and 2017 onward. 

Except that has been ignored for EVs, which originally had zero VED and now have the standard rate applied retrospectively.

Mildly_Miffed

Herzlos said:

We *should* be like Cuba with old cars everywhere

Just pause and think about why Cuba has old cars "everywhere"...

They're all pre-Jan 1959, when Che and Castro toppled the US-backed regime. After that, nothing was being imported... except for smallish numbers of cars from friendly regimes.

That's why there's a lot of Ladas and other Sov-bloc stuff of varying ages, a fair few 80s French cars, and a lot of modern Chinese stuff.
Oh, and most of the old Yank stuff is actually cobbled together with string and sellotape and bits of Russian trucks.
Oh, yes - and most of it is a tourist novelty... The population don't use cars for their day-to-day lives. They're too damn poor, and too busy trying to scrape a living in whatever way they can.

So... yeh... Be careful what you wish for.

MattMattMattUK

Goudy said:

MattMattMattUK said:

There is no need to introduce a new tax for EVs, just increase fuel duty for a short term boost and in the long term use funds raised from general taxation. 

There are many problems with this.

First off, you would be asking others/everyone to pay what drivers used to pay.
To make car usage basically tax free (car ownership tax is VED) and burden society as a whole with recapturing that revenue is going to have far greater repercussions on the economy.

We already do ask some to pay for what others use, benefits, the NHS, education, etc. As a net contributor I have no say in how my contribution is made over the one vote that someone gets if they are a net burden. Around 80% of households own a car, everyone uses services which use motorised road transport to provide that service, in reality it will make no difference overall and sure some people will benefit a little, but the cost saving from simplification would be beneficial overall. 

Goudy said:

It won't be long before the state pension increases past the tax free earning limit, so now "granny" on a state pension will share the burden while someone floats around it a £100,000 Audi e-tron for free?

Someone in that Audi e-Tron who will have paid £17k in VAT on a vehicle which they will have purchased using income that will likely be taxed at 40% or more so will have already paid quite a lot of tax just to get that car.

Goudy said:

Higher general taxation slows the economy, something the government are trying to stop and are actually trying to increase (in their own limited way)

Higher taxes of any kind slow the economy, barring a few very unusual situations. SDLT slows the housing market, VAT slows retail sales, fuel duty discourages fossil fuel use, alcohol and tobacco taxes reduce sales, corporation taxes reduce investment, payroll taxes reduce employment, the drag on the economy from general taxation is no different to the same amount of tax raised by a targeted tax. 

Goudy said:

Plus it's not actually a vote winner is it, that's why no government has had the nerve to touch the likes of income tax for 50 years.

Which is why it would make sense to do it as a complete re-writing of the tax system, complete reform, removal of loopholes, simplification as well as a rise in total net tax income.

Goudy said:

Now there is a situation where more people will move sooner from ICE to EV's, further reducing the revenue from fuel duty, thus the need to keep increasing the general taxation to compensate.

Unlikely to be an issue before 2040 at the earliest if we kept increasing fuel duty, keep raising it to keep it revenue neutral until it is gone, then use general taxation to solve the issue. 

Goudy said:

You also have a lot of low users that will pay a disproportionate amount than they did and millions that never paid it as they didn't drive all paying towards a replacement revenue scheme.

Lots of costs are disproportionate, I pay a disproportionate amount of tax compared to the services I use, hence being a net taxpayer, as do around 40% of adults, the other 60% of adults, as well as children are a net burden. 

Goudy said:

Adding more fuel duty is just going to drive up the price of everything we buy, increasing inflation.
It's all moved by fuel with duty on it.
Okay, you could advocate haulage firms move to electric, but that's just the same as moving from ICE cars to EV's. More lost fuel duty that you now say must come from more general taxation. 

It would push up the cost slightly in the short term, but haulage firms are already moving to electric vehicles. 

Goudy said:

Now we have a slow economy, high inflation, high general taxation and someone to blame, drivers.
And let's not forget, it's these very drivers that used to pay this revenue.

We have a slower economy because of the tax revenue full stop, it does not matter where it comes from, £10 billion in tax, whether it is from fuel duty, income tax, VAT or corporation tax has an equal impact, the only slight exception is capital gains.

Goudy said:

On the one hand you have a downward spiral of car usage tax and an ever increasing general taxation burden spread across everyone, driver or not drivers.
There won't be just a handful of loonies car haters, the country will be full of them.

Not really, most households have a car, those that do not are generally not net taxpayers anyway, so it will likely be pretty flat overall. I tend to ignore loonies and policy certainly should not be decided on their screams at the moon.

Goudy said:

You'd also have the government demotivated with anything driver/road related and as these drivers now bring in f'all.
Follow this through logically and it could be the start of the end for the private car.

Not really, those drivers still vote, which is what matters.

Goudy said:

Much better is to introduce a scheme that captures taxation from those that they used to get it from and that scheme is robust enough to continue as we all transition from ICE to electric.

A hugely complicated scheme open to abuse, a scheme which would cost a lot to operate, a scheme with potentially a high default rate, or just collect slightly more through a system we already have operating that generally works...

Goudy said:

The fuel duty scheme sort of self regulates for miles, the more you do the more you pay.
It also sort of self regulates for engine/car size. The bigger the car/engine the more fuel it uses, the more duty you pay.

A PPM scheme would obviously meet the first target, miles.
Just like fuel duty, the more miles you do the more you pay.

As for the second target, I would think like other PPM schemes around the world, there would be a sliding scale of per miles charge based on vehicle weight at some point.
The bigger/heavier the car the more you pay per mile.

Now we have a scheme that almost replicates the way fuel duty works, ie from miles/weight from only those that use the road.

Or we have a hugely complicated, new system, running parallel to an existing taxation system, which is pointless.  Charge VED based on vehicle weight, with punitive weights for personal vehicles over a certain weight, collect the rest via general taxation.

Goudy said:

As a bonus, it only "bothers" a small percentage of the whole population, current EV owners. 
Most of which would have paid fuel duty when using cars before they bought an EV.

It should bother anyone who applied a modicum of common sense to the tax system, we need a simpler, less complicated, less evadable tax system, not one that is objectively worse. 

Goudy said:

The icing on the cake for the government is this current population of EV owners that haven't been paying any sort of usage taxation are not only relatively small but are a dying breed.
Once any PPM scheme is up and running and EV's are the only choice, any new driver or later changer won't know any different and those that remember that short time of EV usage that was tax free will die off.

The same would happen with any long term change, but that is not a valid reason to make a change, it is certainly not a valid reason to set fiscal policy by.

shinytop

I don't see why it can't be linked to MOTs.  Each vehicle gets an account linked to its RK.  At MOT time the account is debited a charge based on mileage.  New cars get charged according to the estimated mileage on their lease and then reconciled at 1st MOT or lease end. Non leased new cars can PAYG and/or or settle up at 1st MOT or disposal. 

I'm sure there is plenty I haven't thought of ... 

Car_54

Mildly_Miffed said:

Herzlos said:

We *should* be like Cuba with old cars everywhere

Just pause and think about why Cuba has old cars "everywhere"...

They're all pre-Jan 1959, when Che and Castro toppled the US-backed regime. After that, nothing was being imported... except for smallish numbers of cars from friendly regimes.

That's why there's a lot of Ladas and other Sov-bloc stuff of varying ages, a fair few 80s French cars, and a lot of modern Chinese stuff.
Oh, and most of the old Yank stuff is actually cobbled together with string and sellotape and bits of Russian trucks.
Oh, yes - and most of it is a tourist novelty... The population don't use cars for their day-to-day lives. They're too damn poor, and too busy trying to scrape a living in whatever way they can.

So... yeh... Be careful what you wish for.

Not to mention the Caribbean climate, which means their roads aren't spread with highly corrosive salt every winter.

paul_c123

Everything could, can be done with technology, and is already being done for HGV Tachographs. They have a facility to be interrogated by DVSA wirelessly (a variant of long distance bluetooth) and also record GPS position as well as date/time, driving hours, driver, etc. However a digital tacho costs about £800 and then there's the installation.