Car tax

[2drdan]

For those unfortunates that have to drive in to the LEZ in London..........

I might be missing something here but ....

2001 cut off for lower tax band.....

2001 cut off for LEZ compliant vehicles........

Change your model of choice to get through the LEZ (it's quite extensive when you look !!) in 2010, but end up paying the higher tax band......

DON'T change your vehicle to keep lower tax....pay £100 + a day to get through the LEZ in 2010....???????

I may be reading it wrong of course!!

[Turbocharger]

wouldn't it be better to put the tax on fuel to discourage un-necessary use of cars in general, rather than just taxing high CO2 cars more?

Absolutely, and I'm one of (very!) few who would support higher fuel prices for private users. I don't do that many miles a year, maybe 20k, but I justified my MG's tax and insurance costs on fuel grounds alone. Now I do most of my miles at 40mpg, and a few at 25mpg in the LR for recreation. If the MG costs me towards £400 to tax, that looks less attractive and starts to sway the economics towards flogging it again and putting 20k miles a year back on the LR, which makes me richer overall but kills more penguins.

Scrap road tax, give me £2 a litre and use it to fund better public transport.

John (who works in sad poor underfunded public transport )

[tacr2man]

If you are lucky enough to be able to buy a RR sport HSe then you ought to be able to afford to tax it especially in view of the cost per mile of fueling it JMHO

I am not saying I condone the changes but just looking at it realistically .

[GBMUD]

If you are lucky enough to be able to buy a RR sport HSe then you ought to be able to afford to tax it

What if you borrowed to buy a second hand Defender?

Chris

[TJ101]

Just beat me to it Mr Watts,,,

That's not the point tacr2man,, its the fact, that's its not just Range Rovers Sports etc,, its any vehicle (whether £500 or £50k) over aprox 250 grams, and as yet, newer then March 2001 IE Y reg !!! that sees more than a 100% increases !!

[landmannnn]

political mode on

We used to think Tony Blair was an idiot and Gordon Brown a wise man. I think we got it the wrong way around

political mode off

Sorry.

What about those who have 6 or 7 year old mercs/jags/bmws and only do low mileage? They are causing far less emissions than a 1.8 mondeo doing 20k pa, but paying loads more.

What happens to all the extra money, especially the massive first year charge?

[GBMUD]

Did you know that a Ford Focus makes 224g/km? OK, so it is an ST, but still just a car.

Chris

[FridgeFreezer]

<soap box on>

Building a new car isn't exactly eco-friendly, surely we'd be far better driving older cars that get slightly less MPG / emit slightly more CO2 than buying a new, slightly-more-efficient car every few years as the govt and some environmentalers seem to want us to? I don't see how re-using carrier bags for life is suddenly super eco-friendly yet re-using a car that's more than 5 years old is somehow frowned upon.

<down from soap box>

[q-rover]

Agree there FF.

Hence I have never bought a new car, and never will.

I have only ever owned 5 cars of which the P38 is the 5th.

Sadly all but one of the others were written off in accidents.

[plasticbadger]

<soap box on>

Building a new car isn't exactly eco-friendly, surely we'd be far better driving older cars that get slightly less MPG / emit slightly more CO2 than buying a new, slightly-more-efficient car every few years as the govt and some environmentalers seem to want us to? I don't see how re-using carrier bags for life is suddenly super eco-friendly yet re-using a car that's more than 5 years old is somehow frowned upon.

<down from soap box>

I agree FF - do you know on average a car uses 70% of it's life span energy during manufacture.

And also if you look at the full through life environmental cost (I read a survey on this that scored cars in the US) including manufacture, 10 years average use and end of life recycling - then a V8 Disco 3 scores better than a Toyota Prius. That's because of the energy required to manufacture all the electronics, batteries etc. Also all those metals cost more to recycle.

And let's not forget that the average Land Rover says on the road for over 18 years, while the average Mondeo only lasts 9 years.

So, as I've always believed, keeping an old car on the road is better for the environment than building a new one. But then the government can't tax you VAT on the new cost of your 15 year old LR....

[Orgasmic Farmer]

one word on the subject

ECONOMIC GROWTH

[Bowie69]

That was two

[SteveRK]

Now that the cost of tax has got to the point of being significant I feel sorry for those people that that will be affected who drive only a couple of thousand miles a year.

An out moded tax that takes no cognisance of how many miles are driven i.e. company car driver ala me clocking 25k a year and the recently retired person who has just treated himself/herself to a retirement car etc.

Because of this the tax no longer represents a fair and equal tax.

[OilIT]

Reality check [aka political off topic rant]:

This is not about co2 emissions, its just a handy coincidence that the more expensive the car, generally the bigger the car/engine/performance which generally means more co2, and generally the greater income of people who own/drive such vehicles.

So lets not forget that the govenment is built on spin, and all they have done is said 'lets tax the rich and waste the money on NHS middle managers and millenium domes as opposed to frontline care, and low cost housing for primary workers and other such useful things' and positioned it as envionmental tax.

They know that the 1st driver of the RR supercharged really doesnt care about GBP1000 to tax a car - they lose more than that in depreciation per month - and will continue to do so as the curve of depreciation will accelerate as the 3rd owner will baulk at a cheap car with hefty taxes.

The retired guy is no different than anybody else - s/he has choices - prius or RRS.

[marsie]

Luckily both my cars fall into te £185 bracket(1997 defender tdi and 2001 discovery v8) although my disco is only in by 3 days(reg'd 28/2/01) .Could partly understand the hike if the roads were in a decent condition but the main road in my village requires a winch challenge spec car just to travel on it without destroying it

Paul

[pugwash]

what about Q plate SVA'd cars?

AFAIK they pay the flat rate of £180 no matter what they are- the age related thing is only relevant for MOT purposes- from what i can understand from the TfL website they will also only ever pay the lower rate of tax in the city!

time for all of us to finally get our trucks SVA'd?

[Fishd]

I know fuel is already expensive, but wouldn't it be better to put the tax on fuel to discourage un-necessary use of cars in general, rather than just taxing high CO2 cars more?

Sorry mate, I don't mean this as a personal attack, but you raise a point that irks me. People in this country need to understand that we ALREADY have a tax-as-you-drive system... it's called Fuel Duty and it's calculated on every litre you buy!!! If you drive more, you pay more tax... if you have a 'gas-guzzler' you pay more tax!!! (And likely get xmas cards off G.Brown and Family!)

Everywhere I read about fuel economy, taxation and 'green-ness' people suggest a system where you pay more if you use more fuel... IT'S ALREADY HERE!!! And more importantly, the tax is calculated as a percentage (unlike the USA where I believe tax on road fuel is fixed at something like 24 cents per gallon!!!) on top of the cost of fuel AND once they've added their 'duty' to the cost of fuel... they smack us with VAT on the bloomin' lot! So we pay tax... on the tax we're paying!!!!!

All of this is why G. Brown Esq. isn't exactly in a hurry to do anything about high fuel prices!!! He's currently hit the jackpot on the one-armed-road-fuel-duty Bandit and is scooping our hard-earned into his hat, pockets and any recepticle he can find to to dig himself out of the huge debt-whole he's spent the last ten years digging into!!

p.s. Yes, I would have added more exclamation marks if I could have.

p.p.s. I already carbon off-set the CO2 created by my 'gas-guzzler' ... do I get a road-fund-duty discount???

[plasticbadger]

Sorry mate, I don't mean this as a personal attack, but you raise a point that irks me.

Fishd, that's not a personal attack, I agree with you - my point was fuel tax changes driving habits more than road tax IF you're doing the taxing to save the planet. You're right the govenment already has the fuel tax thing in place AND road tax, I should have made that clear in my original post - so actually it's a thank you for pointing out just how much we're being f***ed.

At the end of the day I think we all agree here that Mr Brown is not doing the taxing to save the planet, just to get more money out of our pockets and into his.

So it's a big for Fishd and a big to Brown

I wonder if I could get a wheel up onto his Jaguar's bonnet in my Discovery?