Vehicle tax and towing

[Surfer]

Do you think that using sat tracking to determine the amount of road tax you pay would be beneficial to those using large 4 x 4s? I would then seriously consider purchasing a smaller cheap second hand vehicle for travelling back and forth to work and only use my 4 x 4 on weekends when towing.

The present system means taxing 2 vehicles at a cost in excess of £350 annually plus the insurance. Some countries have the basic 3rd party insurance built into the road tax so every one is insured any way which I think is a good idea as between road tax, insurance and fueld tax you are prevented from doimg something for the environment. You are even taxed if you use bio-diesel.

 

[CliveV]

Hi Ian

Based upon what I understand re the "technology" of satellite monitoring, most techies feel that fairly simple devices will enable a car to disappear or give false info.

No technology is foolproof - now Blunket has been put out to grass (again) common sense hopefully will prevail and more sensible and workable options will come to the fore.

Please do not think I am poking fun at anyone's disability but when Blunket and Brown were the two main protagonists of taxing drivers unmercifully, neither of them even held a driving licence because they had just one good eye between them.

 

[mikeE]

I have often wondered why a basic kind of third party insurance and road tax is not added to the cost of fuel then do away with tax discs. That way if anyone is driving they are automatically taxed and insured and the more miles they drive the more road tax they pay. It seems unfair that the little old lady who only uses her car for a weekly shop pays the same road tax as the guy who does twenty thousand miles a year.

Mike E

 

[CliveV]

This is the best idea - without doubt. Problem is we have a huge infrastructure set up to deal with Car Tax and jobs could go if it was scrapped.

Also as the UK's fuel costs are the highest in Europe, adding another tier of tax to the cost would potentially cause even more problems.

 

[colin(bridgend)]

Sorry Clive but I must disagree. As stated there would be no problems in tax evasion and the tax would be payed as for the amount of use you have of the road. Fair enough there could be job losses at the DVLA but then they could not sell your details on to private companies such as traffic wardens, wheel clampers, etc. Plus the empire at Swansea is like all Government agencies far and away over staffed and top heavy in management. There is a heck of a lot of dead wood which would not be missed and partially solve Gordon Brown's problem of reducing the Civil Service.

 

[mikeE]

I suspect the problem of D.V.L.A. redundancies is the reason this idea has not been put into practice.

Mike E (Cynic)

 

[Dave_5040181]

Although it may seem a sensible way to drag everyone into the net by adding another tax to petrol, surely you can't dish out insurance in the same way as road tax. Maybe the road tax is usefull to track drivers without insurance as you can't buy a tax disc without current insurance. The new high tech cameras are catching loads of untaxed vehicles.

As for fairness as to who pays what, thats another issue but in reality that argument can be carried to all sorts of lengths.

 

[ProfJohnL]

I completely agree with loading fuel with duty and removing road tax. The mandarins who have spent thier lives chasing tax dogers could be put to much better use if they chased cars without valid MOT's,or insurance then thier work would have a genuine social impact for the good.

But can you honestly trust any politician to consider a good plan unless its sexed up and caries a 75 min warning?

 

[Lutz]

The disadvantage of removing road tox completely and adding it all to the price of fuel is that it penalises those that unavoidably have to do a lot of driving while commuting to and from work. To soften the cost of commuting here in Germany, one can claim tax relief so that effectively one doesn't pay any fuel tax on all such journeys. Perhaps that is one alternative. Another would be the system in use in Switzerland where you only pay road tax and insurance for one vehicle (obviously the largest one) but the number plates are transferrable to any car which you own.

 

[colin(bridgend)]

Although I am not in favour of it, it would appear that we are now supposed to be a United States of Europe. If this is the case would it not be better to have an united system for road tax. Surely certain taxes could be spread across the E.U. and not peculier to each country? I realise thta each country making up the E.U. has its own problems regarding such things like taxes but surely certain taxes could be common.

 

[Lutz]

I don't really see the advantage of having common vehicle taxation across Europe. I can already hear the Eurosceptics complaining about even more interference from Brussels. As you correctly say, each country has its own specific problems so let's keep the answers to those problems specific, too. Looking across the borders to see if there is something to learn from neighbours is fair but to force all countries to accept something that may not be beneficial for their particular conditions is rather hard to accept.