Diesel or Petrol????

[Gafferbill]

..........I bought my tow car new in 2001 and unfortunately for me, it was first registered on March1st.
I am about to purchase a years VED and it will cost me £290.
Had my car been first registered at least 1 day earlier back in 2001 then the VED would be costing me £230 a saving of £60 hmy:

The changes to the law that brought this nonsense about were introduced in 2006

 

[Bojeryng]

I would not be concerned or bothered, next week the Government will be advising us to change to some other format, I can see in future most of us will have a Spinnaker !!

 

[Dustydog]

I pay £490.00 so I can't see it getting worse hmy: :woohoo:

 

[WoodlandsCamper]

I pay £490.00 so I can't see it getting worse hmy: :woohoo:

My new diesel is zero this first year and £30 a year thereafter.
... but it COULD get worse.

 

[Gafferbill]

My new diesel is zero this first year and £30 a year thereafter.
... but it COULD get worse.

..............it looks like you will be sitting pretty Graham

For those buying a new car the same as yours after April 1st 2017........it looks like they will pay £160 Ved in the first year and £140/year thereafter hmy:

 

[Raywood]

If you can find the old Vauxhall it would be an ideal tow car. The proof of its pedigree is probably that it was at one time almost the standard Police patrol car. They found it performed better, stood up to the abuse they gave it and lasted despite high mileage and they bought it in vast numbers as they could not find a better alternative.

 

[ProfJohnL]

On the basis we will always be taxed in several ways for needing to use vehicles, then it seems only fair than high milage users should pay more than lower milage users.

The whole VED tax is just a money generator for government. They will continue to manipulate it regardless of any health or climate issues that arise, though they may dress the system up in some way to make us think it reflects the impact of the vehicle on the world.

Yes there is a need to keep a register of vehicles and owners so an annual low flat rate VED covering the admin costs would be reasonable, but to the impact/usage element should be covered differently

If it were to genuinely reflect the impact then VED should be shifted on to the tax element of the fuel purchased, then it would truly match the usage of the vehicle. It would reflect the way the vehicle is used, so lightly loaded less fuel, and whilst towing greater fuel used. Heavier right foot more tax, carefull driving less tax, and so on.

It would also affect those foreign drivers in the UK so no tax dodging.

Other current fixed annual requirements such as MOT's could be upped to help offset any VED losses.

There would be a zero set up costs to this as all the collection and admin mechanisms are already there.

 

[Hutch]

Goodness Gracious, for once I fuly agree with the Prof, most sensible, the more you use the vechile the more you pay, I know that it would hit me hard BUT.
Hutch.

 

[MichaelE]

This idea has been looked at for years and it just wouldn't work too many variable , how much to you add to a litre? They calculated 10 - 20p a litre , the calculation was worked out on average mileage but then a car that does many mpg and low emissions will get penalized as they pay £0 or £20 , the new road tax with a flat rate for everyone with a new car from 2017 is a good step forward

 

[Hutch]

Its not that straight forward, if your car costs more than £40k new for the next 5 years you pay a supplement of £310 on top of the £140 but anyone with an older car stays in the VED bracket they are in, but if you are unfortunate to be an invalid, with a Rolls R. You pay no VED.

 

[Martin24]

Its not that straight forward, if your car costs more than £40k new for the next 5 years you pay a supplement of £310 on top of the £140 but anyone with an older car stays in the VED bracket they are in, but if you are unfortunate to be an invalid, with a Rolls R. You pay no VED.

Or a D-max :cheer:

 

[Hutch]

Ok or a D Max,

 

[Hutch]

My work mates , in Norway had Pajeros as the Heli tow trucks, better than my Vectra, and better than my Kubitsu tractor, we had for towing a 12 ton Helicopter.
Hutch.

 

[MichaelE]

The extra supplement is ok on a £40k plus car but after the 5 years all you will pay is £140 which at present could be in the £500 bracket on a car over 5 years.

 

[ProfJohnL]

This idea has been looked at for years and it just wouldn't work too many variable , how much to you add to a litre? They calculated 10 - 20p a litre , the calculation was worked out on average mileage but then a car that does many mpg and low emissions will get penalized as they pay £0 or £20 , the new road tax with a flat rate for everyone with a new car from 2017 is a good step forward

Hello Michael,

Why would loading the fuel tax penalise cars with good mpg? The tax will be directly related to the amount of fuel you use. Vehicles that use little fuel pay little tax.

Why should cars with low emission be tax exempt when every vehicles has an impact on the environment. Logically those cars with low emissions are also those that generally have better mpg, so they would pay less tax.

 

[MichaelE]

The petrol pump would never know if its filling a car with good mpg or not so they would add the same amount to the price of a litre, as the calculation to recoup the cost of lost revenue would be an average across the board people with good mpg would subsidize people with poor mpg.
The government would lose an average £200 a year on each car, to recoup that how much would you have to add to a litre of fuel?

 

[ProfJohnL]

The petrol pump would never know if its filling a car with good mpg or not so they would add the same amount to the price of a litre, as the calculation to recoup the cost of lost revenue would be an average across the board people with good mpg would subsidize people with poor mpg.
The government would lose an average £200 a year on each car, to recoup that how much would you have to add to a litre of fuel?

Hello Michael, I think I see what you are trying to say.

Based on the current system when highly efficient cars pay less (or even zero) VED than gas guzzlers your concerned that by loading the fuel with tax so everyone pays the same rate of tax is being unfair to those with low emission cars.

Well, look at from a slightly different perspective. Every vehicle that uses the roads wears them out a bit. There are constant costs for policing and other essential activities, so is it fair that some drivers get away with paying less or even nothing towards this?

If the current system is pursued and all drivers end up using zero rated cars then who pays for the roads they are using?

What I am proposing is a much fairer method where you end up paying for what you are using, and if you use a twice as much as the next person you end up paying twice as much tax.

The easiest and fairest system is to use the fuel. If the fuel is load with a fixed rate of tax, then if you only use 10L a month then you only pay 10L worth of tax, But if you are a heavy user either because of your right foot, or driving a bigger vehicle you will buy more fuel and thus pay the proportionally more tax.

That is much fairer than basing a tax on a specification, which does not take into account how much the vehicle is actually used.

Drivers will still have the opportunity to be more tax efficient by purchasing more efficient vehicles and using less fuel to do the same work.

How much might this add to a litre of fuel, Well based on an average of 12000 miles per year and on average cars no doing about 35 to the gallon, and using your estimate of lost revenue per car it would need about 12.8p to be added to each litre of fuel.

Based on the low milage I do each year I currently pay £0.035p per mile for VED My neighbour who has the same vehicle VED group does a very high milage end up only paying £0.009p per mile. Is that fair?

 

[Martin24]

I know it's my circumstances but I would like to keep things as they are because that's cheapest for me. Selfish and unfair maybe but.........

 

[MichaelE]

I agree it wouldn't be fair, but with a fixed price on fuel it never would be , people hardly using their car would end paying more than they do now. If they are are paying zero or £20 then they would feel hard done by.
My old car was £470 a year , the government got that if i drove 40k or 1k , if i did the 12k mileage average with 25 mpg on my calculation i would pay half in duty someone has to make up that loss?
Maybe from 2017 which a fixed rate across the board it would be fairer? Apart from the people paying zero?
What about the people who buy fuel not for road use why should they have to subsidize road users?
Of course we all know that road fund revenue isnt used for roads anyway?

 

[JonnyG]

no system can keep everyone happy ,but adding the road tax to the price of fuel? ummm that typically hits the lower classes the worse off call it what you like.Simply because taxation always proportionally hits them with less income.. i was surprised the CO road tax system lasted as long as it did, and recall mentioning a few years back it could not go on in its current system, I expected them to overhaul the current system still based on say an 8 band system but rejigged instead we have this new system . if i have read it right with the majority of vehicles costing £140 a year after the initial first year higher road tax for most ,it makes a mockery of the supposedly trying to get car emissions ever lower .although we now all know the fix to some degree was in on that one anyway . i pay £110 for my vectrra diesel my wifes Fiat is in the next group up 135 ish? given the new flat rate for most of £140 when its time for us to replace our cars,which we always do with 3 year old models CO and therefore road tax will not be an issue like it was a decade ago when running plus £200 road tax cars,so whatever we buy will almost certainly burn more fuel produce more CO and Nox .the incentive to go lower and lower on emissions because of a few pounds saving on road tax has been removed. OK so it was only ever more of a psychological thing than saving a few pounds but the new system tells you the government doesnt really care that much,so why should I...

 

[emmerson]

Until a few years ago we all paid the same road tax whatever we drove. It worked then. Why can't it work now?

 

[Raywood]

Until a few years ago we all paid the same road tax whatever we drove. It worked then. Why can't it work now?

I think the current system is designed to try and force those with gas guzzlers to downsize. It does seem to have had some effect although that may be more down to the price of fuel. but small cars are getting more popular.

 

[crazyguider]

I've just UPSIZED to a bigger car/guzzler. as I only do 2000 miles a year, none of those are used for towing, however sometimes we need to go away separately and OH joins us on site with my car, while I tow with his. we then park up one car and use the other. I got a bigger engine as we did think about having a towbar fitted, but the £300+ price tag put us off!

 

[MichaelE]

Small cars are mostly zero tax but from 2017 they will be £140 , this will make a difference as people do like the thought of paying nothing to have the car on the road.
As fuel has dropped to nearly a £1 a litre now mpg doesn't seem such a worry? I now fill my car for less than £90 now , that's a drop of £34 in a year.

 

[Gafferbill]

.........2/3of the vehicles on the road are owned and operated by businesses.
Increasing the price of fuel purely as a result of government policy to do away with VED is a non starter.
We already have possibly the most expensive fuel in Europe......so much so that foreign hauliers almost never buy any fuel when operating in the UK.
Their vehicles arrive fitted with huge fuel tanks to enable this......I have seen 2000 litre tanks on trucks!

Fuel forecourts in the UK are actually tax collection points and their owners unpaid tax collectors for the UK government.........dispensing fuel is a secondary function