Road tax system - e-petition

I

IKZ4

Member
Hi,

Following a thread in the M section, I have started an e-petition to HM Treasury, see link below.

My argument is that the current road tax system based on CO2 emissions is not achieving it's environmental objectives. Lot's of people are doing significant mileages in low emission cars - emitting lots of CO2 and yet paying little or sometimes zero road tax. And yet cars like my M Coupe that has done about 1k miles in the last 9 months pay significant road tax, despite actual emissions being substantially lower.

I fear that such action, in the form of direct petition, is bordering on futile, and I know that there are bigger issues to deal with, but as a low mileage driver with an admittedly high emissions car I feel that the system is fundamentally flawed. Thanks for reading.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/45369
 
Does the petition not need a paragraph about what you'd like them to do about it - e.g. increase duty on fuel to recover the lost revenue & remove VED completely?
 
Just to rub salt in the wound I have a 30ft 18 tonne Scania 9 litre motor home which is £165 road tax. It does more miles than my Z too.
 
I can't see a workable solution that wouldn't involve something like the little black box that insurance companies would like us all to have fitted. This would then mean having any type of fast car would be pointless as they would be able to nail you every time you had broken the speed limit simply by looking at the data. For that reason, in the words of Banatyne. I'm owt.
 
Mowflow said:
I can't see a workable solution that wouldn't involve something like the little black box that insurance companies would like us all to have fitted. This would then mean having any type of fast car would be pointless as they would be able to nail you every time you had broken the speed limit simply by looking at the data. For that reason, in the words of Banatyne. I'm owt.
Click to expand...
+1 here
 
Mowflow said:
I can't see a workable solution that wouldn't involve something like the little black box that insurance companies would like us all to have fitted. This would then mean having any type of fast car would be pointless as they would be able to nail you every time you had broken the speed limit simply by looking at the data. For that reason, in the words of Banatyne. I'm owt.
Click to expand...
A workable and easily-administrated system is already in place - it's called fuel duty, and does what a pay per mile black box would do, without all the costly infrastructure requirements - and no easy way to overcome it (i.e. bluetooth/gps jammers).

You drive a fuel-efficient car for a few miles and you pay a little.
You drive a fuel-efficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a few miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car like you stole it and you pay a lot more than the same car driven carefully.
 
I read somewhere that the current tax system loses the government billions of pounds as cars taking advantage of the new rules just decreases the annual revenues. And the number of cars that pay more than the "average" is significantly outweighed by those that pay less.

So much so that I hear that road tolls are becoming inevitable.

I rather suspect that making an argument to the beating heart of the Government (its coffers) might yield better results.
 
mmm-five said:
Mowflow said:
I can't see a workable solution that wouldn't involve something like the little black box that insurance companies would like us all to have fitted. This would then mean having any type of fast car would be pointless as they would be able to nail you every time you had broken the speed limit simply by looking at the data. For that reason, in the words of Banatyne. I'm owt.
Click to expand...
A workable and easily-administrated system is already in place - it's called fuel duty, and does what a pay per mile black box would do, without all the costly infrastructure requirements - and no easy way to overcome it (i.e. bluetooth/gps jammers).

You drive a fuel-efficient car for a few miles and you pay a little.
You drive a fuel-efficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a few miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car like you stole it and you pay a lot more than the same car driven carefully.
Click to expand...

You drive a incredible sounding straight six for a few miles and you pay stupid amounts?

:D

Joke aside, whilst a system that would tax mileage (and effectively actual emissions) is a great idea, the only way to govern it aside from what is currently enforce makes having this sort of car pointless.

Instead, I just end up complaining to the council on a regular basis until pot holes are filled and streets are correctly lit etc.

:)
 
mmm-five said:
Mowflow said:
I can't see a workable solution that wouldn't involve something like the little black box that insurance companies would like us all to have fitted. This would then mean having any type of fast car would be pointless as they would be able to nail you every time you had broken the speed limit simply by looking at the data. For that reason, in the words of Banatyne. I'm owt.
Click to expand...
A workable and easily-administrated system is already in place - it's called fuel duty, and does what a pay per mile black box would do, without all the costly infrastructure requirements - and no easy way to overcome it (i.e. bluetooth/gps jammers).

You drive a fuel-efficient car for a few miles and you pay a little.
You drive a fuel-efficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a few miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car for a lot of miles and you pay more for the same miles as the fuel-efficient car.
You drive a fuel-inefficient car like you stole it and you pay a lot more than the same car driven carefully.
Click to expand...

All very good but what government in their right mind is going to implement a system like that? lets tell 90% of the population (that's the ones who aren't currently tootling around in high VED attracting ///M cars) that we are going to whack yet another whopping great tax onto fuel. The good news is that you can keep that £30 - £70 per year that you currently pay on your Fiesta to put it towards the extra fuel bill which will no doubt now cost you double the difference. Also, what about all the logistic companies and other businesses that rely on transport/fuel to make a buck. I'm sure they would welcome the massive amount extra that this new taxation system would cost them. it would be a sure fire nail in the coffin of any political career.

The simple fact is. If you don't like paying massive VED bills every year then don't buy a car in one of the highest brackets. It's a cost of ownership and if you can't afford the tax then buy a cheaper car. The bands and their charges are well publicised so it's not like it's a sneak tax hat nobody knows about before they buy a car.
 
Mowflow said:
The simple fact is. If you don't like paying massive VED bills every year then don't buy a car in one of the highest brackets. It's a cost of ownership and if you can't afford the tax then buy a cheaper car. The bands and their charges are well publicised so it's not like it's a sneak tax hat nobody knows about before they buy a car.
Click to expand...

I don't like paying £475 a year road tax (who would?) but I do it. I don't like income tax either but I still have a job!

I was aware when I bought the M that it was in the top tax bracket. That's not really my point though. The point is that a tax policy with environmental justifications is fundamentally misguided. I equally disagree with zero or minimal road tax for 'low emission' cars that do high miles. A friend has just bought a 320d Efficient Dynamics car with zero road tax. 70+mpg on a sensible run, very clever tech. But by doing 30k miles a year he emits 5.7 tonnes of CO2 (6 times as much as my M) tax free. What happened to 'polluter pays'?

Another example - my mum has a VW Fox, CO2 is 139g, road tax is £135 and she does 2k miles a year. Cost per tonne of CO2 emitted =
£303 a year! If my friends 320ED was taxed at the same rate it would cost £1700 a year, but it's actually free. It just doesn't seem right to penalise low mileage drivers - regardless of CO2 emissions.
 
I'm with the OP on this, although I dont know the answer.

I think the problem is that the government use the environment as the reason for charges, so you'll probably find the banding's have got nothing to do with ACTUAL harmful emissions, and more likely just nice easy advertising, cos its easy to say a large engine is worse for the environment than a smaller engine.

Take fuel duty for example....one reason they use to justify that is as a deterent to driving cars and to try and make people use public transport instead. Live in a rural area and you will know thats not feasable, and in reality, they want you to use more fuel so they get more money.

What the op is asking is, is it fair for a car to be taxed higher just because the stats of that engine read worse than another car, when the actual use of that car may be different (less useage).

Dont know how to fix it, cos also agree with the argument on haulage companies etc.

Perhaps different systems of taxation for private vehicles (i.e. just fuel duty so its all usage based) and a different system for commercial vehicles (i.e. some form of road tax but cheaper fuel duty?).
 
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